Remembering Conquest

Remembering Conquest: Feminist/Womanist Perspectives on Religion, Colonization, and Sexual Violence addresses the issue of sexual violence against women from feminist and womanist theological perspectives. Taken from proceedings of a panel discussion at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, this informative book offers sociologists, clergy, and women an examination of how negative stereotypes in society are derived from Christian perspectives and other religions. Exploring abuse against Native American, African- American, Filipino, and Thai women, Remembering Conquest will help you recognize the combination of issues that lead to violence against women.

Thorough and compelling, this valuable book will urge you to advocate for change in how religious groups interpret women so that religion can provide a moral and ethical source of equality for women instead of a social barrier.

This intelligent book will help you understand the changes that need to be made as you read about numerous atrocities, including:

• the history of violence experienced by American Indian women during colonization and realizing that prior to this time, sexual violence did not exist in American Indian societies
• how the United States’colonization of Thailand is directly related to sexual violence today against women, which is expressed in the form of the booming sex industry as well as the AIDS epidemic
• how poverty in the Philippines has made women and children second-class citizens who must make the ultimate sacrifice and sell their bodies and their souls to survive

  Remembering Conquest provides you with a unique religious perspective on the subject of violence against women to enlighten you as to how religion can unknowingly help or hinder a woman’s healing. You will discover how to assist religious communities in rediscovering new interpretations of their faith traditions and become a moral and ethical source of liberation for women, such as holding perpetrators of abuse responsible for their actions and not insinuating that the abuse victim needs to be “helped” by religion in some way.

  Compelling and informative, Remembering Conquest provides you with ideas to help bring healing and power to women who are suffering injustices by reinterpreting faith traditions.

Five essays confront how religion has been used to justify/prevent/ heal sexual violence against Native American, Buddhist, and other women. Lewis teaches religious and ethnic studies at Metropolitan State U., Minneapolis. Fortune is founder and executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, Seattle. Co-published as , v.1, no. 2, 1999. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR