Female Leaders in New Religious Movements ed. by Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice (review)

This important volume has been several years in the making and is a landmark in the study of founders and leaders of new religious movements, in that it focuses on prominent women in this milieu. The editors, Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice, are both young scholars with an immersive interest in and extensive knowledge of the field. Their introduction is short and to the point, and the following twelve chapters cover a wide range of geographical and cultural contexts and styles of female leadership. Marzia Coltri's "Women and NRMs: Location and Identity" uses a feminist lens to situate thealogy and women's perspectives in "real, concrete and existential social and cultural contexts" (12). This chapter is a fast-paced tour of women as leaders and actors within Wicca, the pro-ANA/MIA online community (which crafts spiritual pathways and posits as new goddesses Ana[rexia] and buli[Mia], ecospirituality, African matriarchal movements, and western womanist spirituality. It sets the scene for Laura L. Vance's discussion of Ellen G. White, which links the prophet to previous charismatic American Christian women, gives a short but comprehensive biography of White, and traces her progress from the Millerites to Seventh-day Adventism, a denomination in which she "never held an office" (41) but was unquestionably a leader.

Erin Prophet's study of the role that Elizabeth Clare Prophet, her mother, played as leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant is a fascinating glimpse behind the façade of a woman who used her intelligence and attractiveness (she married four times and there are allegations of affairs) while teaching conservative views on marriage, sexuality, and children. The chapter by Inga Tøllefsen shifts attention to India and the founding of Embrace the World in 1981 by Amma—as Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is called. Hagiographical events from Amma's childhood, her giving of darshan to devotees in person and via Amma dolls, and the use of the internet for devotees to express bhakti and receive darshan, make for fascinating reading. Elin Thorsén's "intersectional reading" of the shared leadership of Amma and Bhagavan treats another Amma (mother)—Padmavathi—in an unusual case of a heterosexual marriage as a model of spiritual leadership of the Oneness Movement. A less positive case of a heterosexual couple is profiled in Christian Giudice's consideration of Mary Ann de Grimston and The Process Church of the Final Judgment. He convincingly argues that the handsome and charismatic Robert de Grimston (formerly Moor) was secondary to Mary Ann MacLean in the group, and that she was venerated as a deity, "the Jehovah of the Old Testament" (138).

Vivianne Crowley's chapter on Olivia Robertson is an intriguing look at the Anglo-Irish upper class and the engagement with esotericism among the Durdin-Robertson family at their ancestral seat, Huntington Castle. This is followed by Avery Morrow's sketch of Deguchi Nao, the female founder of Oomoto, with particular emphasis on automatic writing, her possession of "masculine" qualities, and her transformative effect on her successor, Deguchi Onisaburō. The next chapter shifts attention to Africa, with Serawit Bekele Debele's examination of Aya Momina, an Oromo religious leader who is "still one of the most revered female religious leaders among both Muslim and Christian Ethiopians" (194) despite institutional discouragement, and Abebech Wuletu, a contemporary female medium. Fortune Sibanda's chapter on female leadership in Mudzimu Unoera sect of Guruve, Zimbabwe introduces Tespy Nyanhete (also known as Girl Jesus), the "daughter of Entrance Nyanhete (Mother Mary) and Okinebheti Nyanhete (Father Joseph) (211). Sibanda argues that Mother Mary is the effective leader of the group, and that this configuration of powerful mother and savior daughter is a paradoxical authority structure in patriarchal Zimbabwe.

The last chapters focus on the United States. Shai Feraro's analysis of the "radical/cultural" feminist influences on Starhawk's "feminist witchcraft" is an insightful...