Religious book notes
Gerhart, Mary
ing or civil disobedience has more im- pact; what religious and secular activists ONE of the recognized-even can learn from each other; how the canonized-sources of...
...Craig- injustices that others suffer...
...Commonweal: 694 lian of Norwich, are fresh and recon- tively feminist, transformatively apophatic (negative) mysticism...
...dialect and his dialectic gave the Devil a ped too, its rear legs are clipped...
...gions or self-started congregations or in...
...39.50, 516 pp...
...eighth circle of Hell...
...tan's tail...
...Church is a prod evangelism with his heritage from the minister...
...Helena...
...will reform itself if the truth of the past title essay is on Catherine of Siena These books remind us that the conis made sufficiently clear), who, in an age when a woman's realis- sequences of equality for women afliberationist (taking a "stand on be- tic options were either marriage or fect all women and men-both dihalf of the disenfranchised and the dis- convent, rejected both, and on rectly and indirectly...
...These are important derstood, is human experience...
...Let those PEGGY ROSENTHAL, author of Words and perhaps, but just as surely, men who think they know better about faith Values (Oxford University), is a member of would have destroyed themselves and morals seek whatever comfort they the Genesee/Finger Lakes Nuclear Disar- by destroying the world they live may find in other denominations or relimament Network...
...Chapter two out- The Feminist Mystic and Other Es- Visions of Women, hr Linda A. 13e11, lines "ways of coping": marginalist says on Women and Spirituality, Hurnana Press...
...Other Mary Gerhart I worry, though, that in speaking from authors have begun to publish refleca position so firmly within the move- tions on women's experience - usu- eral bishops who have spoken out on ment, Loeb makes it hard for outsiders, ally their own - in ways that make it behalf of justice for women: Bishops especially critics, to listen to him...
...voices around the country calling for a well as the author's personal experi- In Gender and God: Love and Dehalt to the arms race, Leob seems to have ence...
...countries, and she has taught art and lesson from Mother Teresa instead of The passages are by well known art history at several universities...
...His father was the clarion call...
...A "critical" reading, land as $21.95...
...responsibility sanitized against the sanctimoniousness of Satan...
...I think this is a shame, because it visual materials on the elderly and, three classical analogies (the chariot might restrict his readership to the al- women in society and winner of the from Plato's Phaedrus, the net and the ready converted...
...The coincidence of Follen's jumps again after its middle legs are clipcient and guileful traveling companion...
...kv Mars• elegance of Gustav Klimt...
...CHURCH ethical message, and enlist him in the menace...
...Women questions for movement activists to be The best known feminist theoloconsidering, and Loeb presents them gians have been unanimous in their doing theology with the authority of someone long famil- claim that women's experience of the iar with the literature of the intellectual past has been ignored, denigrated, or left...
...The roadmap Church relies on to pur- us...
...The theme of his book is that if F. Forrester Church crusade for nuclear peace...
...His sociological markings enliven he warns, quoting Aldous Huxley's his theology, broaden the reach of his novel about 2105, written in 1948...
...Hosmer is an Episcopal formaiion of women...
...His citations range from as he calls the Devil, infiltrated the Con- To emphasize the need for realistic Scripture to Upton Sinclair, from Dante gregation in the fight over slavery...
...She also ently unaware that the movement's equa- here are special examples of the genre quotes at length the 1979 Pastoral Lettion of nuclear disarmament and peace is of testimonial--special because they ter of seven Minnesota bishops, strongly resented, even scorned, by those have been written in the light of com- which ends with an apology, unprecewho believe that our nuclear deterrent munal experience and reflect com- dented as far as I know: "If we, as has kept and is keeping peace...
...His German accent muffled his for ears to hear while we can still jump...
...His latest book is Prescriptions for ture...
...and "Are of their sex in the church and their as argument as repartee and informa- women human...
...He blends his not understand the message of their flea...
...The sanity of Church's call to transform our hell on Destroying earthly hells earth into a heaven within our reach clears our minds to cope with the nuclear THE DEVIL AND DR...
...An orgy of criminal imbeELIOT JANEWAY is the author of the Jane- cility...
...In a Gender and Gad: Love and Desire in clear power industry...
...In "Take Back the larger, more complex, and potentially a liberationist stance: structural, per- Night," Giles interprets the feminist better because more discerning than sonal, transformative, transforma- call to political action in relation to the one we inhabited before 197Q...
...bines them with authority worn casually, by hard-core atheists as simply soft- Dante puts diviners, astrologers, and as literature unveiling philosophy, as headed...
...Church moral for the young reared in illiterate reminds us that the Devil among us is captivity to televised violence...
...Charisma and erudition explaining his fall...
...God and each of us...
...systematically misunderstood...
...Charisma and luted him as a gentleman...
...God's shadow side," forecasters...
...This being concerned with the "selfish" philosophers (such as Plato, Aristotle, is a book to ponder anti enjoy...
...Armed with a Burning Patience: freedom of Chagall, the wind-driven The subtitle of Christian Feminism symbolism of William Blake, and the by Mary Bader Papa-"Completing The Feminist Mystic and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality, ed...
...We are the Manhattan's Gold Coast...
...how the canonized-sources of theolog- Religious booknotes movement can more effectively engage ical reflection is biblical literablue-collar workers and also blacks...
...what ture...
...The with the gender issue in their time...
...And leaders of local churches, have ever Woman: Survivor in the Church, by when, in the course of his narrative, he closed ourselves to the Spirit's presJoan Ohanneson, Winston, $6.95...
...26 December 1986: 695 (about residents of Amarillo, Texas, read along with Hope in Hard Times in parative literature at its best, doing douwhere nuclear bombs are assembled...
...scribes women whose eyes have been blunt oversights are witty and in- "What do women want...
...r (staying at the fringe of church life), edited by Mary E. Giles, is a daring loyalist (standing by the institution for "integration and definition" of two reference book, revealing how thinkthe sake of a "greater good"), re- terms- feminist and mystic-and ers struggled (or failed to struggle) visionist (assuming that the institution their "expanded connotations...
...In chapter one...
...Reason is here, not so much ought women to do...
...J. S. Mill, Engels, Schopenhauer, written a book addressed to women FukslClaretian, 35.95, 1861 pp...
...Completing the derot, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Theological Union in Chicago, has Subtotal Woman, by Van• Bader Papa...
...the author is apparent in each case, wide-ranging and heuristic, carrying In his excitement at hearing so many and the book is informed by others as within itself the changes it promotes...
...women's lives...
...9.3 PP- "The Courage to Be Alone-In and Craighead, is an extraordinarily af- a critical analysis of the "price to be Out of Marriage," Wendy Wright on fordable collection of thirty-seven 7 paid...
...Why sages about women and anthologized head's work has been exhibited in five doesn't Sister Theresa Kane take a them in her hook, Visions of Women...
...Satan aspired to be an dom, but grim in assessing ignorance of and learning, leavened with love of author, thereby unmasking his pride and how to use freedom...
...and "Where Are Hinmer...
...sire in Christian Spirituality, Rachel shut out those who had something else to A writer and producer of audio- Hosmer organizes material around say...
...Continued from page 674) burst and the froth subsides, the pathEven without the atomic bomb, ways are plain enough: Let those who Belial could have achieved all His wish to follow St...
...Chapter four is Craighead explicates her experience priest and one of the founders of the of creative spirit as "Mothergod...
...Its response to the peril in which we live, to Dostoyevsky to Huxley...
...Prosperity...
...That book and Christian Spirituality, by Rachel Grace Mojtabai's Blessed Assurance pair of essays-"Where Have Women Been...
...Sister Mary Luke Zenophon, Maimonides, Montaigne, Carolyn Osiek, who teaches New Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, DiTestament Studies at Catholic Christian Feminism...
...Her ink the Subtotal Woman"-is tongue- E. Giles, Crossroad, $8.95, 159 pp, in-cheek as are many of her vigorous The Mother's Songs: Images of God the responses to comments like the fol- Reflections on Simone Weil" by KaMother, by Meinrad C raighead, Paulist, lowing: Just what's so unjust about thryn Hohlwein, argues by example $9-95, paper, 79 pp...
...Images of- the Church, hr Carolyn Osiek, Paulisr, nence...
...hanced by brief texts, sometimes au- pare their grievances to the pressing Linda A. Bell has collected pastobiographical, always poetic...
...Beyond Anger: On Being a "The Feminine Dimension of Con1/2 by l1-inch brilliant color plate Feminist in the Church is an important templation," and Dorothy Donnelly reproductions...
...The passages were selected church, Hers is a brief but pointed the insights of the women's move- for representing classic answers to the argument...
...He is nosUST eighty-eight pages - and chock cloaked in virtue...
...In structed in the context of human rela- ecclesiastical---leading to a "trans- "Immanent Mother," Meinrad tionships...
...liam D. Borders, Charles A. Buswell, hand label "peace movement," appar- All but one of the books reviewed and Maurice Dingman...
...and Shakespeare sa- Dante's sketch of the goings Do in the do not usually go together...
...Augustine, Dante's Beatrice, and JuTorah will live forever...
...and complex anger...
...interests of women...
...The concluding essay, recalls the bold images and spatial church...
...paper...
...charity, honesty and accountability...
...late, great chairman of the Senate Church's pen arms urbanity with Foreign Relations Committee, his dynamite, and facility with urgency...
...Cowley, $7.95, 142 pp...
...It arms- ds for dealsubstance do not usually make for read- Unitarians have been viewed askance ing with economists as the necessary ing on the run...
...He refers us to people in need...
...From the archives of All Souls magicians on display with their heads analysis threaded by anecdote, and as itself, Church fishes up a confrontation turned backwards...
...The description of The...
...This is a valuable initial experience of fear, rejection, tion, for both women and men...
...What opened to the systematic oppression formed...
...The personal style of Spirit's forgiveness...
...Nietzsche, Santayana, Gilman, and "convinced of the validity of the Tohin, who wrote the foreword to this deBeauvoir) and theologians (such as feminist critique of institutional reli- hook, comments that Vatican II...
...When the flea jumps, and front for writing this account of our an- venience...
...ing or civil disobedience has more impact...
...After He knows first hand, as he is demonstrat- heaven-sent chance to get him purged...
...The Devil and Dr...
...one woman is commonsense importance of techniCORRECTION quoted as asking, "Why am 1 able to cal terms - for example, "critical," The featured listing of "Human Family" receive more equity in civil society, in meaning "to distinguish," over books in our November 21st issue the pagan marketplace, than in the against "fundamentalist" and should have listed the price of Ellis Is- church that speaks to me of justice and "literalist...
...The church will survive the deparway Letter...
...occasionally comes across people who 204 pp...
...Today the of editorial work...
...abolitionist, hellbent on bringing moral then clips its front legs and repeats the Church reveals his qualifications up issues into collision with political con- command...
...Church is com- PATRICK GRATTON Commonweal: 696...
...Correspondence mother's family Democratic dynasts in "The Devil is way ahead of schedule," Idaho...
...experience...
...A tunnel-visioned researcher keep up with the Devil, the alter-ego of He was also an abrasively militant first trains a flea to jump on command...
...They were the advocacy preached with the force of that shows they can be self-defeatingly forefathers of our modern breed of humility but voiced with satire born of hard-headed too...
...Peter's successors reREVIEWERS purposes...
...A little more slowly, main in the Catholic church...
...the researcher orders it to jump again, ing in his ecumenical and compassionate Satan contrived to persuade the respecta- and the flea fails to respond, the experimission at All Souls Unitarian Church on bles in the congregation that they could menter pronounces it deaf...
...hurly-burly of politics...
...Another major source, not so positive vision of the future the move- well recognized and perhaps less unment should project...
...How can privileged for the definition implied in the title of paintings reproduced here are en- American women even begin to com- the hook...
...To those seeing her hook which makes sense of the new on "The Sexual Mystic: Embodied work for the first time, Craighead's art paradigm now emerging in the Spirituality...
...For more possible to do theology inclusive Leo T. Maher, Carroll T. Dozier, Wilinstance, he repeatedly uses the short- of women's experience...
...Order of St...
...Chapter three surveys the Theresa of Avila who "did what she authors we glimpse a world that is kinds of conversions that accompany could do...
...we don't deal with it, it will dispose of Harper & Row, $12.95, 88 pp...
...Hosmer's readings author, Rabbi Herman, carries it "from MARY GERHART reaches hermeneutics, of the Genesis creation story, pastemple to temple, from place to place," religion, and literature at Hobart and sages from the Gospels, Phaedrus, as an example that, "although millions William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Marrina, of Jews have been murdered, our York...
...As she has...
...Margaret Miles writes on God the Mother, by Meinrad 34.9.5, paper...
...sue the elusive trail to God tracks the Church gives a tender but pointed Eliot Janeway tricky appearance of the Devil...
...Women Today...
...The responses of this book to questions, "What is woman...
...Through these inherited...
...And they call it progress...
...Osick de- ment...
...He almost always talgic about childhood longings for freeJ full of wisdom, sharpened with wit appears in drag...
...The author conveys the voices of people who work for the nu- apt comments and questions in Woman: Survivor in the Church...
...Forrester Church com- by hardcore believers as soft on God, and evils they are in getting down to earth...
...Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in "generatrix," and "divine immaThe Mother's Songs...
...Tertullian, Jerome, Kierkcgaard, and gion" and desiring nor to leave the which she observed, barely discerned James...
...But, to be fair, Loeb Gabriel Award in 1979 for a TV show keys from biblical texts) and two condevoted a previous book Nuclear Cul- on "Women's Gifts," Joan Ohanne- temporary ones (genetic imprint and ture, to listening sympathetically to the son combines a narrative thread with gravity...
...So The Devil and Dr...
...The book is jection as "backlash" or "resistance...
...He is deft in minister was a German, Charles Follen, Church offers a tale with a twist for Sariding them all and more in his race to in fact, a professor of German literature...
...what religious and secular activists ONE of the recognized-even can learn from each other...
...order to hear the full range of popular ble duty as a call to political and ethical Commonweal, September26) need to be responses to living in the nuclear age...
...none...
...she notices, distinguishes between litYanov Torah should have read as fol- In another essay, "The Bishop as eral and other kinds of meanings, belows: A Torah, smuggled piece-by- Healer: Churchmen Challenge the tween various literary forms and piece into a Nazi work camp in Poland, Status Quo," Ohanneson quotes scvis later rescued and brought to sources, and between different strands America by an amigra...
...ence and power within women, we object to certain actions of the antinu- apologize to them and we seek the clear movement, he dismisses their ob- munal criticism...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 22
