Modern Women of Faith Trivia Quiz

Answer: Missionaries of Charity

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Macedonia (then Albania) on August 26, 1910. The mission of the Roman Catholic order she created was to wholeheartedly love and care for the poorest of the poor for free. The Missionaries of Charity includes more than 4500 nuns in over 120 countries who take additional vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Answer: Kabbalah

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Kabbalah is defined as "a medieval and modern system of Jewish theosophy, mysticism, and thaumaturgy marked by belief in creation through emanation and a cipher method of interpreting Scripture."

The Kabbalah Center offers this explanation for the red bracelet: "The Red String protects us from the influences of the Evil Eye. Evil eye is a very powerful negative force. It refers to the unfriendly stare and unkind glances we sometimes get from people around us. Envious eyes and looks of ill will affect us, stopping us from realizing our full potential in every area of our life."

Another celebrity adherent of Kabbalah is Madonna.

Answer: Harriet Tubman

The Episcopal Church chose July 20th to honor these women because it's the anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross around 1820 in Maryland. She was a conductor on the famous "Underground Railroad", a series of safehouses and escape routes to get slaves out of the southern US to the freedom of the north. This activity was the origin of her being called Moses. After the civil war, she became active in the women's suffrage movement, particularly for rights of African-American women.

Answer: Queen Elizabeth I

The title Supreme Governor of the Church of England is a title held by the British monarch to signify their honorary role as head of the Church. While Elizabeth I's father, Henry VIII, declared himself head of the Church after he rejected papal authority in 1534, the title Supreme Governor was created for Elizabeth I.

Answer: Warsaw

Irena Sendler smuggled the children out of the Warsaw Ghetto by putting them in suitcases, trolleys and boxes. She wrote the name of each child and their placement on slips of paper and put them in jars which she buried in a garden.

Students in rural Kansas wrote a play of her life called "Life in a Jar" which brought Sendler's more attention. Although Sendler had been honored by The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority (Yad Vashem) in 1965, her story was virtually unknown to the world at large. The students discovered that she was still alive and living in Poland at the age of 91 and she lived to know of her honor by the Nobel Peace Prize organization.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame made a 2009 movie based on Sendler's life, "Irena's Children", starring Oscar winner Anna Pacquin in the title role.

For more information on this remarkable woman go to: www.irenasendler.org, the official website of the Irena Sendler Project.

Answer: Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc is the national heroine of France. She was burned at the stake for heresy in 1431. Although the "procès de réhabilitation", the first step in the canonization process, took place in 1455, her beatification as a saint wasn't begun until 1869. In 1909 Pope Pius X declared her beatified and Pope Benedict XV named her St. Joan of Arc in 1920.

Mother Cabrini and Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes died in 1879 and 1917, respectively. Mary Magdalene has been venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Oriental Orthodox faiths. She was not canonized, but rather achieved early saintly status via the process called "The Sense of the Faithful". In this way early Church leaders, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, named saints before the current canonization procedures were in place.

Answer: Orthodox

The Reform Movement, Judaism's most progressive branch, ordained Sally Preisand as the first American female Rabbi in 1972. The first female Reconstructionist Rabbi (Sandy Eisenberg Sasso) followed in 1974 and the Conservatives named Amy Eilberg its first female Rabbi in 1985.

Answer: Hinduism

Sri Anandamayi Ma was born Nirmala Sundari in what is now Bangladesh in 1896. As a child she experienced the Hindu state of ecstacy when listening to the devotional chanting known as kirtan. Though uneducated, she spontaneously chanted Sanksrit hymns known only to trained gurus.

The main theme of her theology was in perfecting those actions that raised man's divine nature and in self realization. As more people were drawn to her divine persona an ashram was built in her honor in 1927. In time, more than 25 ashrams were named for her. When Kamala Nehru, the wife of future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, became a follower in the 1930s Anadamayi Ma's fame rose. She died in 1982 and is buried on the banks of the Ganges River.

Answer: Anglican Communion, Episcopal Church of America

The Lambeth Conference, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is the premier meeting of the World Anglican Communion when all bishops convene for study, worship and conversation. It is held every 10 years.

The first female Anglican priest was ordained in Hong Kong in 1944, though the 1948 Lambeth Conference condemned the bishop who performed the ordination and rejected her priesthood. Once the 1968 Conference voted to allow women as deacons, however, the floodgates leading to full priesthood were open.

The musical "Me and My Girl" features the song "Lambeth Walk," which refers to what was once a working class area of London.

Answer: Michelle Pfeiffer

The website of the Church of Scientology offers this description:
"Scientology is the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life. The Scientology religion comprises a body of knowledge extending from certain fundamental truths."

Hubbard started his first church in New Jersey in 1953 with its theology based on his book "Dianetics." Controversial aspects of Scientology include the belief that thetans (one's spirit or soul) once lived among extra-terrestrials before being trapped in a human body, and an opposition to psychiatry.