Theology and Language.

As had been true for several decades, issues dealing with women—their rights and roles in reproduction, in the family, and in the workforce— were controversial in all areas of U.S. society. Jewish and Christian groups grappled with what kind of leadership, if any, women should exercise in their synagogues and churches. Women attended seminaries, were ordained, and found work on church and synagogue staffs in increasing numbers, but were still seldom senior rabbis, pastors, and denominational executives or bishops. Women's roles were particularly problematic in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam because the Bible and Koran were written in and about patriarchal societies, as were other works important in Jewish and Christian contexts (for example, the Talmud, Church Fathers, and Hadith). All of this literature takes for granted that men have absolute authority over all members of...