CH021-512 - Women in the History of Christianity
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2,940 Standard Tuition Fee
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12Credit Points
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0.125 EFT
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5AQF level
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Category foundational unitA
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Christianity in History Unit Discipline
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, students willA. Know and understand
Demonstrate Foundational knowledge and understanding of the experiences and contributions of women in the history of Christianity.
B. Be able to
1 Trace major trends for women in the history of Christianity.
2 Outline the contribution of selected women to the history of Christianity.
3 Draw on evidence from selected primary and secondary sources on the history of women in the history of Christianity.
C. Be in a position to
Relate perspectives from the history of women in Christianity to inform ministry contexts
Content
Section A: Students must study at least 10 of the following topics:
1. Women in the early Christian centuries (lecturers must focus on at least two of these topics):
- Disciples, Deacons, patrons, widows
Mary Magdalene OR Lydia OR Phoebe
- Martyrs and bone gatherers
Pudentiana and Praxedes OR Blandina OR Perpetua and Felicitas
- Ascetics, virgins, mothers
Macrina OR Scholastica OR Thecla OR Monica OR Helena
2. Women in the medieval church (lecturers must focus on at least two of these topics):
- Women, religion and everyday life in the medieval era
- Nuns and abbesses
Hilda OR Hildegard
- Empresses and patrons
Theodora OR Margaret Beaufort
- Mystics and beguines
Julian of Norwich OR Margery Kempe OR Catherine of Siena
3. Women in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras (lecturers must focus on at least two of these topics):
- Reformation women
Katherine Zell OR Katherine von Bora
- Puritan women
Sarah Edwards OR Sarah Osborn OR Anne Dutton OR Phyllis Wheatley
- Witches and dissidents
Mary Dyer OR Abigail Williams
- Impacts of the Reformation on Women
4. Protestant women in the 18th and 19th centuries (lecturers must focus on at least two of these topics):
- Patrons and preachers
Selina, Countess of Huntingdon OR Mary Bosanquet Fletcher OR Catherine Booth
- Social Reformers
Josephine Butler OR Hannah More
- Deaconesses
Isabella Gilmore OR Katherine Ferard
- Missionaries and evangelists
Hannah Marshmann OR Helen Barrett Montgomery OR Dora Yu OR Maria Brown
5. Women and the church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: (lecturers must focus on at least two of these topics):
- Catholic Women in the church
Mary MacKillop OR Mother Theresa OR Dorothy Day
- Women and the Ordination debates
Winifred Kiek OR Patricia Brennan
- Women and Christianity in the Global South
Paula Dlamini OR Christiana Abiodun Akinsowon OR Kang Wan-suk
Section B:
The study and analysis of a selection of 4-8 primary documents, chosen from the following (or equivalent primary texts):
- Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas
- Acts of Paul and Thecla
- The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, Book IV, Chap XXIII, Abbess Hilda of Whitby (614-680)
- Hildegard von Bingham, Scivias
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love,
- Catherine of Siena, “To Pope Gregory XI”
- Argula von Grumback, “To the University of Ingolstadt.” 1523
- Martin Luther, “The Estate of Marriage,” 1522.
- Sarah Osborn, “Letter to the Reverend Joseph Fish, February 28-March 7, 1767”
- Phoebe Palmer, The Promise of the Father, 1859
- Catherine Booth, Female Teaching, 1861
- Josephine E. Butler, Some Thoughts on the Present Aspect of the Crusade Against the State Regulation of Vice, 1874.
- Helen Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands: an outline of fifty years of women’s work in foreign missions, 1910.
Set Readings
General
Dzubinski, Leanne M. and Anneke H. Stasson, Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles throughout Christian History. Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2021.
Malone, Mary T. Women and Christianity: Vol I. The First Thousand Years. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.
------------------- Women and Christianity: Vol II. The medieval period, AD 1,000-1500. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
-------------------Women and Christianity: Vol III. From the Reformation to the 21st Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
MacHaffie, Barbara J. Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006.
Matis, Hannah. A History of Women in Christianity to 1600. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2022.
Muir, Elizabeth Gillan. A Women's History of the Christian Church: Two Thousand Years of Female Leadership. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2019
Smith, Susan E. Women in mission: from the New Testament to today Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007
Tucker, Ruth A and Walter Liefield, Daughters of the Church: Women and ministry from New Testament Times to the present. New York: Harper Collins, 1987.
Wojciechowski, Jennifer Hornyak. Women and the Christian Story: A Global History Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press, 2022.
Early Church
Cohick, Lynn. Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries. Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2017
------------------ Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life. Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2009.
Denzey, Nicola. The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018.
Hylen, Susan E. A modest apostle: Thecla and the history of women in the early church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Powell McNutt, Jennifer. The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today. Ada, MI: Brazos Press, 2024.
Swan, Laura. The Forgotten Desert Mothers: sayings, lives and stories of early Christian women. Mahwah, NJ: Paulos Press, 2001.
Wijngaards, John. No women in holy orders?: the women deacons of the early church. London: Canterbury Press, 2002.
Medieval women
Amt, Emilie. Women’s lives in medieval Europe: A Sourcebook. Abingdon: Routledge, 1993.
Kalas, Laura and Roberta Magnani, Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age
1000–1500. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024.
Pettroff, Elizabeth. Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1986.
Laura Swan, The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women's Movement. New York: Bluebridge, 2016.
Reformation women
Bainton, Roland H. Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971.
---------------- Women of the Reformation in France and England. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1975.
Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2008.
------- Women Reformers of Early Modern Europe: profiles, texts, and contexts. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2022.
Tucker. Ruth A. Katie Luther, first lady of the Reformation: the unconventional life of Katherina von Bora. Nashville, TN: Zondervan, 2017.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Women and the Reformations: a global history. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2025.
Wilson, Derek. Mrs Luther and her sisters: Women in the Reformation. Kidderminster: Lion Books, 2016.
Zahl, Paul F M. Five Women of the English Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001.
Zell, Katharina Schütz (Author), Elsie McKee (ed), Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2006.
Puritan and Pietist Women
Brekus, Catherine A. Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press: 2017.
Faull, Katherine M. Moravian Women’s Memoirs. Their Related Lives, 1750-1820. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Westerkamp, Marilyn. Women and religion in early America, 1600-1850 : the Puritan and evangelical traditions. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 1999.
Evangelical Women
Cook, Faith. Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 2001.
Stott, Anne. Hannah More: The First Victorian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Lloyd, Jennifer. Women and the shaping of British Methodism: Persistent preachers, 1807-1907. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.
Swallow Prior, Karen. Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2014.
Valenze, Deborah. Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England ; Prophetic sons & daughters. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Williams, Sarah C. When Courage Calls: Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice for Women. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2014.
Missionaries
Cupit, Tony and Ros Gooden and Ken Manley, From five barley loaves: Australian Baptists in global mission 1864-2010, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014.
Robert, Dana L. American Women in Mission, A Social History of their Thought and Practice. Mercer: Mercer University Press, 1997.
Seton, Rosemary. Western Daughters in Eastern Lands: British Missionary Women in Asia. Oxford: Praeger. 2013.
Women in the church: nineteenth – twenty-first century
Cameron, Marcia. God's Gamechangers: How God Affirms Women's Public Ministry. Sydney: Eider Books 2024.
Legath, Jenny Wiley. Sanctified Sisters: A History of Protestant Deaconesses. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Lindsay Elaine & Janet Scarfe, Preachers, prophets & heretics: Anglican women's ministry. Kensington: UNSW Press, 2012.
Ma, Julie. “The Role of Christian Women in the Global South,” Transformation Vol. 31(3), 2014: 194–206.
McGuiness, Margaret M. Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America. New York: New York University Press, 2013.
West, Janet. Daughters of freedom: a history of women in the Australian church. Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1997.
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