Renew Network is a women’s ministry network for the United Methodist Church based in The Woodlands, Tx. It was founded in 1989 as the Evangelical Coalition for United Methodist Women as a network for evangelical women within the church. Renew works to encourage women to become leaders within the church and assist churches in developing […]

United Methodist Women is a national, New York City-based faith-organization with approximately 800,000 members. Its objectives include promoting the empowerment of women, children, and youth; promoting anti-racism, multiculturalism, and inclusion; promoting fair labor practices; and promoting economic and environmental stewardship and sustainability. Media contact is Yvette Moore.

Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez is an assistant professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. She specializes in American religious history and women and religion. She is at work on The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture, in which she argues that Mary appealed to both American Catholics and Protestants at a time when […]

Elizabeth Dreyer is a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn. She is the editor of a series of books, Called to Holiness: Spirituality for Catholic Women.

Alka Arora is an assistant professor in women’s spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is an expert on women and spiritual-based activism and Buddhism.

Chung Hyun Kyung is associate professor of ecumenical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, she was once a temporary Buddhist novice nun. Her interests include feminist and eco-feminist theologies and spiritualities from Asia, Christian-Buddhist dialogue and Zen meditation. She wrote Struggle to Be the Sun Again: […]

Judith Weisenfeld is a professor of religion at Princeton University, where she specializes in American religion, with an emphasis on the 20th century and African American religion. She is the author of Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949. She has taught 17 courses, including ones on religion and American film, religion […]