Study: Women wider expanse of moral issues

While the “moral values” debate has focused on abortion and gay marriage, many women involved with religious groups define moral issues to include economic justice and poverty, fairness and building strong communities, a new study says.

Women should take a more active role in religious leadership and help define the issues in a debate that has been largely dominated by men, suggests the study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Women’s roles in the church are growing, “but they have not taken on as big a role as men in outlining concerns about religion and moral values in politics,” said Amy Caiazza, author of the study.

Its findings were based on in-depth interviews with 75 religious activists, most of them women. It was supported by the Ford Foundation.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Maryland lieutenant governor who is a professor at Georgetown University, said the view of religion and moral values in the political debate needs to be broadened.

“We have seen the privatization of religion,” Townsend said, “both from people on the left, who say get religion out of politics, and from people on the right, who only want to talk about private issues, not justice issues, not the economy, not the environment, not tax reform.”

Townsend said people involved in the women’s movement and activists on the political left should reclaim a share of turf that has been dominated in recent years by political conservatives. Social movements such as the civil rights movement used to have a strong religious background, she said.

“We’ve lost our progressive religious traditions,” Townsend said. “This is an effort to reclaim the richness that was ours.

“We’re going to take it back.”