In conversations about women’s rights, religion and feminism are often cast as incompatible. But religious women tend to see it differently.

In this episode, we’ll explore how religious women around the world are defining what liberation looks like on their own terms, and ask what we can all learn from their efforts, regardless of what we believe. We’ll talk to writer and lawyer Dania Suleman about how women of faith are defending their religious freedom in secular spaces while also challenging gender inequality within their own communities. And we’ll talk to Dr. Dianne Stewart about African heritage religions, where women have often held spiritual authority in ways that challenge familiar assumptions about gender and hierarchy.

Dania Suleman is the author of A Different Cloth: Reimagining Faith and Feminism.

Dr. Dianne Stewart is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University, and the author of Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad, Volume II, Orisa. Learn more about her work, and her many other publications, at her website.

Also mentioned this episode:

Asma Lamrabet is the author of Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading. Learn more about her work on her website.

Learn more about Hind Makki’s Side Entrance Project here.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty is the author of the essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”

About 70% of all Americans consider themselves spiritual in some way, whether it be a belief in the soul, spirits or just the idea that something's going on beyond the natural world and what science can prove. But that doesn't mean they're ordering off the menu of organized religion.

In this episode, we’ll talk to religion professor Liz Bucar, about this “spiritual salad bar” approach: where people pick and choose ingredients from various religions. What’s lost if we take these traditions out of their intended context? And could it even be causing harm?

We’ll explore this through the lens of yoga - practiced by one in every six Americans alive today.

Practicing yoga regularly does have proven health benefits, but it’s rooted in a much deeper spiritual and religious tradition that many people aren’t even aware of. With Liz, we’ll explore how restoring some religion to secular or new age spiritual practices can make them more ethical, meaningful and effective.

Liz Bucar is a professor of religion at Northeastern University. She is the author of four books and her writing, teaching, and public lectures cover a wide range of topics but generally focus on how a deeper understanding of religious difference can change our sense of what is right and good. She is the author of the forthcoming book Beyond Wellness, which you can pre-order here. Learn more about her work on her website.

Join us for Season 10 of How God Works, starting next week!