In the last decades of the 17th century, the feast of Christmas in Lutheran Germany underwent a major transformation when theologians and local governments waged an early modern "war on Christmas," discouraging riotous pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety. Christmas rituals, such as the "Heilig Christ" plays and the rocking of the child (Kindelwiegen) were abolished, and Christian devotion focused increasingly on the metaphor of a birth of Christ in the human heart. John Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio, composed in 1734, both reflects this new piety and conveys the composer's experience living through this tumult during his own childhood and early career. Markus Rathey's book is the first thorough study of this popular masterpiece in English. While giving a comprehensive overview of the Christmas Oratorio as a whole, the book focuses on two themes in particular: the cultural and theological understanding of Christmas in Bach's time and the compositional process that led Bach from the earliest concepts to the completed piece. The cultural and religious context of the oratorio provides the backdrop for Rathey's detailed analysis of the composition, in which he explores Bach's compositional practices, for example, his reuse and parodies of movements that had originally been composed for secular cantatas. The book analyzes Bach's original score and sheds new light on the way Bach wrote the piece, how he shaped musical themes, and how he revised his initial ideas into the final composition.

This volume comprises papers presented at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Joachim Wach's death, and the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth. Its purpose is to reconsider both the problematic, separate legacies of these two major twentieth-century historians of religions, and the bearing of these two legacies upon each other. Shortly after Wach's death in 1955, Eliade succeeded him as the premiere historian of religions at the University of Chicago. As a result, the two have been associated with each other in many people's minds as the successive leaders of the so-called "Chicago School" in the history of religions. In fact, as this volume makes clear, there never was a monolithic Chicago School. Although Wach reportedly referred to Eliade as the most astute historian of religions of the day; the two never met, and their approaches to the study of religions differed significantly. Several dominant issues run through the essays collected here: the relationship between the two men's writings and their lives, and in Eliade's case, the relationship between his political commitments and his writings in fiction, history of religions, and autobiography. Both men's contributions to the field continue to provoke controversy and debate, and this volume sheds new light on these controversies and what they reveal about these two scholars' legacies.

This is an introduction the thought of Robert Holcot, a great and influential but often underappreciated medieval thinker. Holcot was a Dominican friar who flourished in the 1330's and produced a diverse body of work including scholastic treatises, biblical commentaries, and sermons. By viewing the whole of Holcot's corpus, this book provides a comprehensive account of his thought. Challenging established characterizations of him as a skeptic or radical, this book shows Holcot to be primarily concerned with affirming and supporting the faith of the pious believer. At times, this manifests itself as a cautious attitude toward absolutists' claims about the power of natural reason. At other times, Holcot reaffirms, in Anselmian fashion, the importance of rational effort in the attempt to understand and live out one's faith. Over the course of this introduction the authors unpack Holcot's views on faith and heresy, the divine nature and divine foreknowledge, the sacraments, Christ, and political philosophy. Likewise, they examine Holcot's approach to several important medieval literary genres, including the development of his unique "picture method," biblical commentaries, and sermons. In so doing, John Slotemaker and Jeffrey Witt restore Holcot to his rightful place as one of the most important thinkers of his time.

Who was Paul of Tarsus? Radical visionary of a new age? Gender-liberating progressive? Great defender of orthodoxy? In Remembering Paul, Benjamin L. White offers a critique of early Christian claims about the real Paul in the second century C.E.a period in which apostolic memory was highly contestedand sets these ancient contests alongside their modern counterpart: attempts to rescue the historical Paul from his canonical entrapments. Examining numerous early Christian sources, White argues that Christians of the second century had no access to the real Paul. Rather, they possessed mediations of Paul as a personaidealized images transmitted in the context of communal memories of the Apostle. Through the selection, combination, and interpretation of pieces of a diverse earlier layer of the Pauline tradition, Christians defended images of the Apostle that were important for forming collective identity. As products of memory, images of Paul exhibit unique mixtures of continuity with and change from the past. Ancient discourses on the real Paul, thus, like their modern counterparts, are problematic. Through a host of exclusionary practices, the real Paul, whose authoritative persona carries authority as the first window into Christianity, was and continues to be invoked as a wedge to gain traction for the conservation of ideology.

Between 1920 and 1994, the Catholic Church was Rwanda's most dominant social and religious institution. In recent years, the church has been critiqued for its perceived complicity in the ethnic discourse and political corruption that culminated with the 1994 genocide. In analyzing the contested legacy of Catholicism in Rwanda, Rwanda Before the Genocide focuses on a critical decade, from 1952 to 1962, when Hutu and Tutsi identities became politicized, essentialized, and associated with political violence. This study-the first English-language church history on Rwanda in over 30 years-examines the reactions of Catholic leaders such as the Swiss White Father Andre Perraudin and Aloys Bigirumwami, Rwanda's first indigenous bishop. It evaluates Catholic leaders' controversial responses to ethnic violence during the revolutionary changes of 1959-62 and after Rwanda's ethnic massacres in 1963-64, 1973, and the early 1990s. In seeking to provide deeper insight into the many-threaded roots of the Rwandan genocide, Rwanda Before the Genocide offers constructive lessons for Christian ecclesiology and social ethics in Africa and beyond.

While academic and popular studies of Buddhism have often neglected race as a factor of analysis, the issues concerning race and racialization have remained not far below the surface of the wider discussion among ethnic Buddhists, converts, and sympathizers regarding representations of American Buddhism and adaptations of Buddhist practices to the American context. In Race and Religion in American Buddhism, Joseph Cheah provides a much-needed contribution to the field of religious studies by addressing the under-theorization of race in the study of American Buddhism. Through the lens of racial formation, Cheah demonstrates how adaptations of Buddhist practices by immigrants, converts and sympathizers have taken place within an environment already permeated with the logic and ideology of whiteness and white supremacy. In other words, race and religion (Buddhism) are so intimately bounded together in the United States that the ideology of white supremacy informs the differing ways in which convert Buddhists and sympathizers and Burmese ethnic Buddhists have adapted Buddhist religious practices to an American context.
Cheah offers a complex view of how the Burmese American community must negotiate not only the religious and racial terrains of the United States but also the transnational reach of the Burmese junta. Race and Religion in American Buddhism marks an important contribution to the study of American Buddhism as well as to the larger fields of U.S. religions and Asian American studies.

Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan offers the first critical overview of the hymns of Ambrose of Milan in the context of fourth-century doctrinal song and Ambrose's own catechetical preaching. Brian P. Dunkle, SJ, argues that these settings inform the interpretation of Ambrose's hymnodic project. The hymns employ sophisticated poetic techniques to foster a pro-Nicene sensitivity in the bishop's embattled congregation. After a summary presentation of early Christian hymnody, with special attention to Ambrose's Latin predecessors, Dunkle describes the mystagogical function of fourth-century songs. He examines Ambrose's sermons, especially his catechetical and mystagogical works, for preached parallels to this hymnodic effort. Close reading of Ambrose's hymnodic corpus constitutes the bulk of the study. Dunkle corroborates his findings through a treatment of early Ambrosian imitations, especially the poetry of Prudentius. These early readers amplify the hymnodic features that Dunkle identifies as "enchanting," that is, enlightening the "eyes of faith."

Ranging from the medieval period to the present day, this is a brief history of church music as it has developed through the English tradition. Described as "a quick journey", it provides a broad historical survey rather than an in-depth study of the subject, and also predicts likely future trends.

Conflicts between protestants and Catholics intensified as the Cromwellian invasion of 1649 inflamed the blood-soaked antagonism between the English and Irish. In the ensuing decade, half of Ireland's landmass was confiscated while thousands of natives were shipped overseas - all in a bid to provide safety for English protestants and bring revenge upon the Irish for their rebellion in 1641. Centuries later, these old wounds linger in Irish political and cultural discussion. In his new book, Crawford Gribben reconsiders the traditional reading of the failed Cromwellian invasion as he reflects on the invaders' fractured mental world.
As a tiny minority facing constant military threat, Cromwellian protestants in Ireland clashed over theological issues such as conversion, baptism, church government, miraculous signs, and the role of women. Protestant groups regularly invoked the language of the "Antichrist," but used the term more often against each other than against the Catholics who surrounded them. Intra-protestant feuds splintered the Cromwellian party. Competing quests for religious dominance created instability at the heart of the administration, causing its eventual defeat. Gribben reconstructs these theological debates within their social and political contexts and provides a fascinating account of the religious infighting, instability, and division that tore the movement apart.
Providing a close and informed analysis of the relatively few texts that survive from the period, Gribben addresses the question that has dominated discussion of this period: whether the protestants' small numbers, sectarian divisions and seemingly beleaguered situation produced an idiosyncratictheology and a failed political campaign.

In the years since 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown rapidly in terms of both numbers and public prominence. Mormonism is no longer merely a home-grown American religion, confined to the Intermountain West; instead, it has captured the attention of political pundits, Broadway audiences, and prospective converts around the world. While most scholarship on Mormonism concerns its colorful but now well-known early history, the essays in this collection assess recent developments, such as the LDS Church's international growth and acculturation; its intersection with conservative politics in recent decades; its stances on same-sex marriage and the role of women; and its ongoing struggle to interpret its own tumultuous history. The scholars draw on a wide variety of Mormon voices as well as those of outsiders, from Latter-day Saints in Hyderabad, India, to "Mormon Mommy blogs," to evangelical "countercult" ministries. Out of Obscurity brings the story of Mormonism since the Second World War into sharp relief, explaining the ways in which a church very much rooted in its nineteenth-century prophetic and pioneering past achieved unprecedented influence in the realms of American politics and international business.

The Philokalia (literally "love of the beautiful") is, after the Bible, the most influential source of spiritual tradition within the Orthodox Church. First published in Greek in 1782 by St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Macarios of Corinth, the Philokalia includes works by thirty-six influential Orthodox authors such as Maximus the Confessor, Peter of Madascus, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas. Surprisingly, this important collection of theological and spiritual writings has received little scholarly attention. With the growing interest in Orthodox theology, the need for a substantive resource for Philokalic studies has become increasingly evident. The purpose of the present volume is to remedy that lack by providing an ecumenical collection of scholarly essays on the Philokalia that will introduce readers to its background, motifs, authors, and relevance for contemporary life and thought.

The Bavarian mountain village of Oberammergau is famous for its decennial passion play. The play began as an articulation of the villagers' strong Catholic piety, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries developed into a considerable commercial enterprise. The growth of the passion play from a curiosity of village piety into a major tourist attraction encouraged all manner of entrepreneurial behavior and brought the inhabitants of this isolated rural area into close contract with a larger world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists came to see the play, and thousands of temporary workers descended on the village during the play season, some settling permanently in Oberammergau. Adolf Hitler would attend a performance of the play in 1934, later saying that the drama "revealed the muck and mire of Jewry." But, Helena Waddy argues, it is a mistake to brand Oberammergau as a Nazi stronghold, as has commonly been done. In this book she uses Oberammergau's unique history to explain why and how genuinely some villagers chose to become Nazis, while others rejected Party membership and defended their Catholic lifestyle. She explores the reasons why both local Nazis and their opponents fought to protect the village's cherished identity against the Third Reich's many intrusive demands. On the other hand, she also shows that the play mirrored the Gospel-based anti-Semitism endemic to Western culture. As a local study of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi era, Waddy's work is an important contribution to a growing genre. As a collective biography, it is a fascinating and moving portrait of life at a time when, as Thomas Mann wrote, "every day hurled the wildest demands at the heart and brain."

The promise of land and progeny to the patriarchs-Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-is a central, recurring feature of the Pentateuch. From the beginning of the story of Abraham to the last moment of Moses's life, this promise forms the guiding theological statement for each narrative. Yet literary and historical inquiries ascribe the promise texts to a variety of sources, layers, and redactions, raising questions about how the promise functioned in its original manifestations and how it can be used to understand the formation of the Pentateuch as a whole. Joel S. Baden reexamines the patriarchal promise in its historical and contemporaneous contexts, evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of both final-form and literary-historical approaches to the promise. He pays close attention to the methodologies employed in both documentary and non-documentary analyses and aims to bring source-critical analysis of the promise to bear on the understanding of the canonical text for contemporary readers. The Promise to the Patriarchs addresses the question of how the literary-historical perspective can illuminate and even deepen the theological meaning of the Pentateuch, particularly of the promise at the heart of this central biblical corpus.

Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans to focus on Islam more than ever before. In addition, more and more of their neighbors, colleagues, and friends are Muslims. While much has been written about contemporary American Islam and pioneering studies have appeared on Muslim slaves in the antebellum period, comparatively little is known about Islam in Victorian America. This biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest American Muslims to achieve public renown, seeks to fill this gap.
Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as U.S. consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In 1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of merits.
In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb'slife and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb's life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam's ambassador to America (and vice versa). As America's Muslim community grows and becomes more visible, Webb's life and the virtues he championed - pluralism, liberalism, universal humanity, and a sense of civic and political responsibility - exemplify what it means to be an American Muslim.

Between 300 BCE and 200 CE, concepts and practices of dharma attained literary prominence throughout India. Both Buddhist and Brahmanical authors sought to clarify and classify their central concerns, and dharma proved a means of thinking through and articulating those concerns.
Alf Hiltebeitel shows the different ways in which dharma was interpreted during that formative period: from the grand cosmic chronometries of kalpas and yugas to narratives about divine plans, gendered nuances of genealogical time, royal biography (even autobiography, in the case of the emperor Asoka), and guidelines for daily life, including meditation. He reveals the vital role dharma has played across political, religious, legal, literary, ethical, and philosophical domains and discourses about what holds life together. Through dharma, these traditions have articulated their distinct visions of the good and well-rewarded life.
This insightful study explores the diverse and changing significance of dharma in classical India in nine major dharma texts, as well some shorter ones. Dharma proves to be a term by which to make a fresh cut through these texts, and to reconsider their own chronology, their import, and their relation to each other.

Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar offer an in-depth exploration of how Amerindian epistemology and ontology concerning indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon have spread to Western societies, and of how indigenous, mestizo, and cosmopolitan cultures have engaged with and transformed these forest traditions. The volume focuses on the use of ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink essential in many indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon. Ayahuasca use has spread far beyond its Amazonian origin, spurring a variety of legal and cultural responses in the countries to which it has spread. The essays in this volume look at how these responses have influenced ritual design and performance in traditional and non-traditional contexts, how displaced indigenous people and rubber tappers are engaged in the creative reinvention of rituals, and how these rituals help build ethnic alliances and cultural and political strategies for their marginalized position. Some essays explore important classic and contemporary issues in anthropology, including the relationship between the expansion of ecotourism and ethnic tourism and recent indigenous cultural revival and the emergence of new ethnic identities. The volume also examines trends in the commodification of indigenous cultures in post-colonial contexts, and the combination of shamanism with a network of health and spiritually related services. Finally, Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond addresses the topic of identity hybridization in global societies. The rich ethnographies and extensive analysis of these essays will allow deeper understanding of the role of ritual in mediating the encounter between indigenous traditions and modern societies.

This study reconstructs the history of a significant crisis in Christian-Jewish relations: the attempt to confiscate and destroy all Jewish books in Renaissance Germany. This unprecedented effort to end the practice of Judaism throughout the empire was challenged by Jewish communities and also, in an unexpected move, by Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), the founder of Christian Hebrew studies. Reuchlin had revolutionized the Christian study of the Bible with his Hebrew grammar. In 1510 he published an extensive, impassioned, and successful defense of Jewish writings and Jewish legal rights against the book pogrom, later acknowledged by Josel of Rosheim, the leader of German Jewry, as a ''miracle within a miracle.'' The fury that greeted Reuchlin's defense of Judaism resulted in a protracted heresy trial that polarized Europe, ultimately fostering a receptive environment for the nascent Reformation movement. The legal and theological battle over charges that Reuchlin's opinions were "impermissibly favorable to Jews," a conflict that elicited intervention on both sides from the most powerful political and intellectual leaders throughout Renaissance Europe, formed a new context for Christian reflection on the status of Judaism. David Price offers insight into important new Christian discourses on Judaism and anti-Semitism that emerged from the clash of Renaissance humanism with this potent anti-Jewish campaign, as well as an innovative analysis of Luther's virulent anti-Semitism in the context and aftermath of the Reuchlin Affair. His book is a valuable contribution to study of an important and complex development in European history: Christians acquiring accurate knowledge of Judaism and its history.

Although trade connects distant people and regions, bringing cultures closer together through the exchange of material goods and ideas, it has not always led to unity and harmony. From the era of the Crusades to the dawn of colonialism, exploitation and violence characterized many trading ventures, which required vessels and convoys to overcome tremendous technological obstacles and merchants to grapple with strange customs and manners in a foreign environment. Yet despite all odds, experienced traders and licensed brokers, as well as ordinary people, travelers, pilgrims, missionaries, and interlopers across the globe, concocted ways of bartering, securing credit, and establishing relationships with people who did not speak their language, wore different garb, and worshipped other gods. Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900 focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium. Written by an international team of scholars, the essays in this volume examine a wide range of commercial exchanges, from first encounters between strangers from different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse groups. In order to broach the intriguing yet surprisingly neglected subject of how the relationship between trade and religion developed historically, the authors consider a number of interrelated questions: When and where was religion invoked explicitly as part of commercial policies? How did religious norms affect the everyday conduct of trade? Why did economic imperatives, political goals, and legal institutions help sustain commercial exchanges across religious barriers in different times and places? When did trade between religious groups give way to more tolerant views of "the other " and when, by contrast, did it coexist with hostile images of those decried as "infidels "? Exploring captivating examples from across the world and spanning the course of the second millennium, this groundbreaking volume sheds light on the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places, and reflects on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects across the many frontiers that separated humankind in medieval and early modern times.

Written from the perspective of the various denominations that thrived in the 19th century, this comprehensive survey of the middle period in America's religious past actually starts a little earlier, in the 1780s. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the citizens of the newly-minted republic had to cope with more than the havoc wreaked on churches and denominations by the war. They also tasted for the first time the effects of two novel ideas incorporated in the Constitution and the First Amendment: the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice any religion.

Grant Wacker takes readers on a lively tour of the numerous religions and the major historical challenges--from the Civil War and westward expansion to immigration and the Industrial Revolution--that defined the century. The narrative focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants, in denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, and their competition for dominance with new immigrants' religions such as Catholicism and Judaism. The author discusses issues ranging from temperance to Sunday schools and introduces the personalities--sometimes colorful, sometimes saintly, and often both--of the men and women who shaped American religion in the 19th century, including Methodist bishop Francis Asbury, ex-slave Sojourner Truth, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, and evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Religion in American Life explores the evolution, character, and dynamics of organized religion in America from 1500 to the present day. Written by distinguished religious historians, these books weave together the varying stories that compose the religious fabric of the United States, from Puritanism to alternative religious practices. Primary source material coupled with handsome illustrations and lucid text make these books essential in any exploration of America's diverse nature. Each book includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and index.

The United States has never had an officially established church. Since the time of the first British colonists, it has instead developed a strong civil religion that melds national symbols to symbols of God. In a deft exploration of American civil religious symbols ranging from the Liberty Bell and Vietnam Memorial to Mount Rushmore and Disney World, Peter Gardella explains how the places, objects, and symbols that Americans hold sacred came into being and how they have changed over time. In addition to examining revered historical sites and structures, he analyzes such sacred texts as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Kennedy Inaugural, and the speeches of Martin Luther King, and shows how five patriotic songs-''The Star-Spangled Banner,'' ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic'' ''America the Beautiful,'' ''God Bless America,'' and ''This Land Is Your Land''-have been elevated into hymns. Arguing that certain values-personal freedom, political democracy, world peace, and cultural tolerance-have held American civil religion together, this book chronicles the numerous forms those values have taken, from Jamestown and Plymouth to the September 11, 2001, Memorial in New York.

Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, is popularly named the Little Flower. A Carmelite nun, doctor of the church, and patron of a score of causes, she was famously acclaimed by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times. Therese is not only one of the most beloved saints of the Catholic Church but perhaps the most revered woman of the modern age. Pope John Paul II described her as a living icon of God. Her autobiography Story of a Soul has been translated into sixty languages. Having long transcended national and linguistic boundaries, she has crossed even religious ones. As daughter of Allah, she is venerated widely in Islamic cultures. Therese has been the subject of innumerable biographies and treatises, ranging from hagiographies to attacks on her intelligence and mental health. Thomas R. Nevin has gained access to many untapped archival materials and previously unpublished photographs. As a consequence he is able to offer a much fuller and more accurate portrait of the saint's life and thought than his predecessors. He explores the dynamics of her family life and the early development of her spirituality. He draws extensively on the correspondence of her mother and documents her influence on Thereses autobiography and spirituality. He charts the development of Thereses career as a writer. He gives close attention to her poetry and plays usually dismissed as undistinguished and argues that they have great value as texts by which she addressed and informed her Carmelite community. He delves into the French medical literature of the time, in an effort to understand how the tuberculosis of which she died at the age of 24 was treated and lamentably mistreated. Finally, he offers a new understanding of Therese as a theologian for whom love, rather than doctrines and creeds, was the paramount value. Adding substantially to our knowledge and appreciation of this immensely popular and attractive figure, this book should appeal to many general readers as well as to scholars and students of modern Catholic history.

In her latest book, Ross Shepard Kraemer shows how her mind has changed or remained the same since the publication of her ground-breaking study, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (OUP 1992). Unreliable Witnesses scrutinizes more closely how ancient constructions of gender undergird accounts of women's religious practices in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.
Kraemer analyzes how gender provides the historically obfuscating substructure of diverse texts: Livy's account of the origins of the Roman Bacchanalia; Philo of Alexandria's envisioning of idealized, masculinized women philosophers; rabbinic debates about women studying Torah; Justin Martyr's depiction of an elite Roman matron who adopts chaste Christian philosophical discipline; the similar representation of Paul's fictive disciple, Thecla, in the anonymous Acts of (Paul and) Thecla; Severus of Minorca's depiction of Jewish women as the last hold-outs against Christian pressures to convert, and others.
While attentive to arguments that women are largely fictive proxies in elite male contestations over masculinity, authority, and power, Kraemer retains her focus on redescribing and explaining women's religious practices. She argues that - gender-specific or not - religious practices in the ancient Mediterranean routinely encoded and affirmed ideas about gender. As in many cultures, women's devotion to the divine was both acceptable and encouraged, only so long as it conformed to pervasive constructions of femininity as passive, embodied, emotive, insufficiently controlled and subordinated to masculinity.
Extending her findings beyond the ancient Mediterranean, Kraemer proposes that, more generally, religion is among the many human social practices that are both gendered and gendering, constructing and inscribing gender on human beings and on human actions and ideas. Her study thus poses significant questions about the relationships between religions and gender in the modern world.