Diana Rigg portrays Philippa, a sophisticated woman who experiences both joy and pain in her newly chosen life as a cloistered nun at Brede Abbey.

Profiles ten nuns and the causes to which they've dedicated their lives. Meet, for instance, Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Republican budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who's willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who's fighting for acceptance of gays and...

These biographies of women who dedicated their lives to their religion reveal the impact women have had on religious thought throughout history.

In Desert Daughters, Desert Sons, professor Rachel Wheeler argues that a new reading of the texts of the Christian desert tradition is needed to present the (often) anonymous women who inhabit the texts. Though these women may have been included by storytellers to provide a foil to the exemplary men in the stories' foreground, Wheeler demonstrates how women's persistence in places they were not welcome witnesses to truths about where wisdom may be...

"An introduction to the sayings, lives, stories, and spirituality of women in the postbiblical, early Christian movement"--

Winner, Conference on the History of Women Religious (CHWR) Distinguished Book Award Winner, 2014 Catholic Book Award in History presented by the Catholic Press Association For many Americans, nuns and sisters are the face of the Catholic Church. Far more visible than priests, Catholic women religious teach at schools, found hospitals, offer food to the poor, and minister to those in need. Their work has shaped the American Catholic Church...