Women Religion and Space in China

<p>What enables women to hold firm in their beliefs in the face of long years of hostile persecution by the Communist party/state? How do women withstand daily discrimination and prolonged hardship under a Communist regime which held rejection of religious beliefs and practices as a patriotic duty? Through the use of archival and ethnographic sources and of rich life testimonies this book provides a rare glimpse into how women came to find solace and happiness in the flourishing female-dominated traditions of local Islamic women’s mosques Daoist nunneries and Catholic convents in China. These women passionately – often against unimaginable odds – defended sites of prayer education and congregation as their spiritual home and their promise of heaven but also as their rightful claim to equal entitlements with men. </p>