Faith, feminism and freedom of thought.(Book Review)

The 1960s was a time of widespread hopefulness and high expectations for Catholic women, especially following positive assertions coming from Vatican II. But the forward momentum didn't continue.

Research shows that in all denominations, it's the women who attend church. Yet the same women frequently have little power in the denominations themselves and in their institutions including higher education.

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In her book Transforming the Faith of Our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion, editor Dr. Ann Braude tells the stories of the women who were on the front lines of change. Braude delivered a keynote address on Catholic higher education and second wave feminism at the National Association for Women in Catholic Higher Education (NAWCHE) conference held at Providence College RI in June.

Braude has served as the director of the women's studies in religion program and senior lecturer in the history of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School since 1998. Before coming to Harvard, she was an associate professor in the departments of religious studies at two Minnesota schools, Macalester College and Carleton College.

Reared in a politically active family, Braude originally planned to attend law school and use her education to work toward equality for women. Undergraduate courses in religion and philosophy convinced her that permanent changes in women's situations required changes in the values that lie beneath the laws and the social structure.

A conference that Braude arranged on religion and the feminist movement focused on the interconnections between religion and the second-wave feminism that began in the 1960s. It was the first effort to elicit and document the collective narratives of the religious women who have advanced a movement that continues to transform America. From that conference came her book and her NAWCHE presentation.