Women, Religion, and Leadership

Women, Religion, and Leadership Women, Religion, and Leadership focuses on women from the traditional context of women as leaders, with chapters observing various aspects of leadership from specifically chosen religious and female leaders and going on to examine the legacies they leave behind. This book seeks to identify and analyze the gendered issues underlying the structural lack of recognition for women within the Church, and to examine the culturally constructed narratives related to these women for evidence of their leadership despite the exclusionary rules applied to force their sub- mission to the dominating forces. Finally, this book intends to draw out of these women’s stories the various lessons of leadership that invoke current relevancies among prevailing leadership paradigms. Written by experts from disciplines as varied as leadership and communication studies to sociology, and history to medievalist and English scholars, Women, Religion, and Leadership will prove key reading for scholars, aca- demics and researchers in these and related disciplines. Barbara Jones Denison is Department Chair of Sociology and Anthropology at Shippensburg University, USA. Routledge Studies in Leadership Research 1 Executive Team Leadership for the 21st Century Richard L. Nolan 2 Leadership-as-Practice Theory and Application Edited by Joseph A. Raelin 3 Leadership Varieties The Role of Economic Change and the New Masculinity Alexander Styhre and Thomas Johansson 4 Responsible Leadership Realism and Romanticism Edited by Steve Kempster and Brigid Carroll 5 CSR, Sustainability, and Leadership Edited by Gabriel Eweje and Ralph J Bathurst 6 Revitalising Leadership Putting Theory and Practice into Context Suze Wilson, Stephen Cummings, Brad Jackson, and Sarah, Proctor-Thomson 7 Women, Religion, and Leadership Female Saints as Unexpected Leaders Edited by Barbara Jones Denison Women, Religion, and Leadership Female Saints as Unexpected Leaders Edited by Barbara Jones Denison First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-20484-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-46849-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents About the Contributors vii Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1 Performing Sanctity: Exemplary Leadership in the Lives of Medieval Female Virgin Martyrs 1 SHARI HORNER 2 Hilda of Whitby (614–680): Unexpected Leadership by the “Mother of Bishops” 15 BARBARA JONES DENISON 3 Clare of Assisi (1191–1253): Breaking Through Societal Barriers for Women 33 KAREN MONIQUE GREGG 4 Catherine of Siena (1347–1380): Political Persuasion and Party Leadership of the Intellective Mystic 56 SALLY M. BRASHER 5 Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680): She Who Bumps Into Things and the Power of Servant Leadership 78 JESSICA HUHN 6 Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821): A Proto-Feminist Servant-Leader for the Nineteenth Century—and Today 100 DAVID VON SCHLICHTEN 7 Catherine McAuley (1778–1841): Exhibiting Mercy Through Service and Authentic Leadership 119 PATRICK J. HUGHES vi Contents 8 Katharine Drexel (1858–1955): Philanthropist and Transformational Leader 134 JESSICA HUHN 9 Edith Stein (1891–1942): Empathic Leadership: Saint Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Perspective 155 JEN JONES 10 Pauli Murray (1910–1985): A Person and Her Typewriter 178 KRISTIN PIDGEON Index 199 About the Contributors Sally M. Brasher is associate professor of history at Shepherd University. She received her Ph.D. in history from the Catholic University in Washington, DC. Her areas of interest include medieval European history, medieval Italian history, renaissance and reformation history and gender history. Her research includes a book on women of the Humiliati , a religious movement in medieval Italy, and essays on women and religion in several prominent history journals. Most recently, she has completed a book, Hospitals and Charity, Religious Culture and Civic Life in Medieval Northern Italy , which will be published during the summer of 2017 by Manchester University Press. Barbara Jones Denison is associate professor of sociology and director of the graduate program in organizational development and leadership at Shippensburg University. She recently edited History, Time, Meaning, and Memory (Brill, 2011), and published “Memory and Memorization” in Vocabulary for the Study of Religion (Brill, 2015). Her current research is on the intersectionality of leadership and gender in the lives of religious women, and she regularly presents her work at annual conferences of the International Leadership Association, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the North Central Sociological Association and the Pennsyl- vania Sociological Society. Karen Monique Gregg hails from the University of Notre Dame where she earned her Ph.D. in sociology. She is currently in a visiting assistant professor position at Indiana University South Bend where she specializes in the sociology of religion, gender and social psychology. She is active in the North Central Sociological Association and in the Midwest Sociological Society. Shari Horner is professor of English at Shippensburg University, where she teaches medieval literature. She is the author of The Discourse of Enclo- sure: Representing Women in Old English Literature (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001) as well as numerous articles on Old and Middle English literature. Her current work looks at representations of the body and material culture in Middle English saints’ lives. viii About the Contributors Patrick J. Hughes earned his Ph.D. in leadership at Alvernia University and currently teaches leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is an active member of the Association of Leadership Educators, the International Leadership Association, and the Pennsylvania Sociological Society. Jessica Huhn holds an M.S. in organizational development and leadership and is an active member of the North Central Sociological Association and the Pennsylvania Sociological Society. Her research interests focus on the application of servant leadership tools in non-profits (including religious groups) and in the direct provision of human services. Jen Jones teaches communication, leadership, gender and women’s studies and the liberal arts at Seton Hill University. She has published in the journals Leadership and the Humanities and the Merton Seasonal. Her research examines intersections among the topics she teaches through the lens of existential phenomenology and various scholars within this tradi- tion. She has presented her work at the International Studying Leadership Conference, the International Leadership Association Global Conference, and the National Communication Association Convention. Kristin Pidgeon has a background in organizational development and leadership, and in women’s history. Her research interests include intersec- tional feminism and women’s movements of the twentieth century. David von Schlichten is an assistant professor of religious studies as well as the coordinator of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. He is an active member of the College Theology Society and is a board member for the Blackburn Center, a non-profit committed to reducing gender violence. In addition, David is a student in Seton Hill’s MFA program in writing popular fiction. Foreword My research focus and interests from undergraduate days onward have been in the sociology of religion. The lives of religious women in orders, as mys- tics, or venerated as saints have always fascinated me, and I wrote multiple times in graduate school on the sociology of contemplative nuns. By chance and by fortune, I ended up working and teaching in the leadership studies field as it intersects with sociology, and I pursued several projects related to religious leadership. A few years ago, in a period when my then most recent project had run its course, I was casting my thoughts to how women in religious orders were often remade as “saints” for their piety, devotion or martyrdom. What if instead of this more traditional hagiography we were to consider the title “saint” as a metaphor for leader? What leadership lessons are there to be gleaned from the lives of these female saints? If religious sanctity is understood not as the lesson in itself, but rather as the vehicle or the enabling environment in which these women’s leadership was developed and succeeded, then what could be learned? A second, but equally pertinent, question can be asked about the ability of these women to overcome male hegemony,

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