Endorsements
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This book is a powerful plunge into the views, values, and extraordinary endeavors by women on the leading edge of spirituality and leadership. — Roshi Joan Halifax, Founding Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
Women’s spiritual leadership in circles, tribes, and communities is transforming the world. This compendium of diverse voices showcases its hallmarks: listening and collaboration. Use the provocative, creative suggestions as a practical guide for sharing the insights and extending the reach. — Mary E. Hunt, PhD, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)
We all long for inspiration and guidance. With enormous sensitivity, Women, Spirituality, and Transformative Leadership gives us gems that are both joyous and poignant. Prepare to be uplifted and transformed! — Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
Many religious institutions still hold to explicit glass ceilings that keep women from formal leadership. This obscures women’s extraordinary spiritual roles, their potential to change what we mean by religion and spirituality, and what a spiritual lens can offer to the world’s leading problems. Exploring vital and complex themes like communication and leadership with freshly defined terms, the authors look to a world governed by new conceptions of power and success. The personal spiritual journeys of a diverse group of women offer glimpses of the types of transformations that women spiritual and religious leaders might bring to society. — Katherine Marshall, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Georgetown University. World Faiths Development Dialogue
This book is full of wisdom and speaks the truth on difficult and ever-changing issues: race, gender, inclusion, and power. For people of all faiths—or no faith—it helps spark reflection on how true spirituality for our time can be re-shaped by empowering women. — Elyse Goldstein, Author of ReVisions: Seeing Torah through a Feminist Lens and editor of The Women’s Torah Commentary, The Women’s Haftarah Commentary, and New Jewish Feminism (Jewish Lights)
This book is unique, timely and valuable for everyone concerned with social justice in today’s world. The writers address – with eloquence, sound analysis and vision – the urgent need for deeply respectful interreligious understanding and the importance of faith-motivated women leaders in global discernment and decision-making. Here is a testament to the power of the word, of women, and above all, of faith. — Azza Karam, Ph.D., Editor of “A Woman’s Place: Religious Women as Public Actors”. Senior Advisor, UN Population Fund.
Schaaf – Lindahl – Hurty – Cheen – 4 wise women who call us as women to the urgent task of developing a deep spiritual identity, not for our own good but to better equip us to be agents of transformation in a deeply divided world. Rejoice as you read this inspiring book and ready yourself for transformation. — Joan Campbell Brown, Department of Religion, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY
Women’s voices are key to a new day in interreligious understanding and in the flourishing of the human family! Seeded at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia, in 2009, this effort of the freshly organized “Women of Spirit and Faith” is an essential tool, an exciting read, and a gift on the journey toward a transformed future. — Dirk Ficca, Executive Director, Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions
For 28 years, I have worked on government public policy to better the opportunities and rights for women. How I wish this thoughtful and action-provoking book had been mine during those years! Its premises apply to every level of the work that we all do. What’s wonderful about this thought and action-provoking book is its inclusiveness of ALL women, regardless of culture, faith, experience. The message is that Women’s voice is needed in this world and that we can work together to make it a far better place to live. I wish I could sit down with each and every woman who contributed to this wonderful resource for building a better world through women listening to each other, finding commonality, and speaking with strong voices across the globe. As a woman of faith and an advocate within government for better public policy for women, this book is a resource for women in all walks of life who seek to use the wisdom and knowledge of women to create a culture of peace and well-being for all. — Mary Wiberg, Executive Director, California Commission on the Status of Women
This carefully crafted collection of women’s insights into leadership from a spiritual root goes a long way in connecting the concept of power with the concept of love. Such a linkage stimulates moral courage, encourages social justice, and opens one to deeper, more authentic spiritually grounded relationships. Kathleen Hurty deserves our deepest appreciation and respect for her visionary leadership in this cultural dialogue. — Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., author of Faith & Feminism: A Holy Alliance, President of The Sister Fund
Women of deep faith and spiritual conviction everywhere owe it to themselves to read this compelling collection. An important companion in the struggle for love and justice, Women, Spirituality and Transformational Leadership is a rallying cry for the 21st century, as it highlights the vision and activism of women bridging divides across the usual dividing lines of faith, class, race and generation to bring real hope, healing and wholeness to our broken world. — The Rev. Dr. Katharine R. Henderson, President, Auburn Theological Seminary
Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership is an important book for this pivotal moment. Its collection of voices embody a non-denominational, invitational and inclusive approach to spirituality, while also addressing the nitty-gritty practicalities and challenges that leadership in this transformative time requires of us. It offers a systemic overview of a landscape we’d all be advised to visit, frequently – that of the intersection of diverse women (and men), reinventing leadership to address a pivotal moment of change in our selves, our communities and the world, while staying connected to the mystery, or sacred, within and surrounding us all. It offers useful practices and perspectives about how we may cultivate ourselves to return to right relationship with ourselves, each other and the Earth. — Nina Simons, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Bioneers
If human civilization is to not only survive but thrive, it will be because of women: radical, gutsy, revolutionary women; women who don’t simply become leaders, but who reinvent leadership; women who don’t simply become clergy, but who reinvent religion and spirituality. We don’t need women taking their place in a man’s world, we need women to topple that world and lead us to a new and better one. The wisdom in Kay Lindahl’s Women, Spirituality, and Transformative Leadership points us the direction of a new world with a new heart and a new mind. This book gives me hope. — Rabbi Rami Shapiro, The Divine Feminine in Biblical Wisdom Literature: Selections Annotated and Explained