Fundamentalist women are often depicted as dedicated to furthering the goals and ideas of fundamentalist men and thus of ancillary importance to the movement as a whole. Godly Women, Brenda Brasher's groundbreaking ethnographic study, reveals the paradox that fundamentalist women can be powerful people in a religious cosmos generally understood to be organized around their disempowerment. Brasher spent six months as an active participant in two Christian fundamentalist congregations to study firsthand the power of fundamentalist women. In addition to the narrow set of religious beliefs that...

As the Internet and the World Wide Web overcome barriers of time and space, religion enjoys an ever-increasing accessibility on a global scale. Inevitably, people online have sought out encounters with the otherworldly, launching religion into cyberspace. In this compelling book, Brenda Brasher explores the meaning of electronic faith and the future of traditional religion.

Operating online allows long-established religious communities to reach hearts and minds as never before. Yet more startling is the ease by which anyone with Internet access can create new circles of faith....