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During the past four decades, large numbers of women have entered ordained leadership positions in American religious bodies, resulting in changes in aspects of church life from liturgy and theology to pastoral leadership. At the same time, an explosion of scholarship about women in American religious history has demonstrated that women have always played important roles in shaping and even leading American religious institutions. This is so despite their lack of access to formal ordination, and even though their roles were often undervalued by contemporaries and neglected by historians. The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History provides students, teachers, pastors, and scholars with an accessible reference to more than 750 outstanding individual women and women's organizations.