God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission

God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission by Griffith, R. Marie. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780520207646.

In recent decades, religious conservatives and secular liberals have battled over the "appropriate" role of women in society. In this absorbing exploration of Womens Aglow Fellowship, the largest womens evangelical organization in the world, R. Marie Griffith challenges the simple generalizations often made about charismatic or "spirit-filled" Christian women and uncovers important connections between Aglow members and the feminists to whom they so often seem opposed. Womens Aglow is an international, interdenominational group of "spirit-filled" women who meet outside the formal church structure for healing prayer, worship, and testimony. Aglow represents a wider evangelical culture that has gained recent media attention as women inspired by the Christian mens group, Promise Keepers, have initiated parallel groups such as Praise Keepers and Promise Reapers. These groups are generally newcomers to an institutional landscape that Aglow has occupied for thirty years, but their beliefs and commitments are very similar to Aglows. While historians have examined earlier womens prayer groups, theyve tended to ignore these modern-day evangelical groups because of their assumed connection to the "religious right." Gods Daughters reveals a devotional world in which oral and written testimonies recount the afflictions of human life and the means for seeking relief and divine assistance. A relationship with God, envisioned as father, husband or lover, and friend, is a way to come to terms with pain, dysfunctional family relationships, and a desire for intimacy. Griffiths book is also valuable in showing the complex role that women play within Pentecostalism, a movement that has become one of the most important in twentieth-century world religions.