Winner of the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, this classic text explains what feminist theology is and how we can rediscover the feminine God within the Christian tradition, offering a profound vision of Christian theology, women's experience, and emancipation. First published in 1992, it immediately caused a groundswell reaction for and against the concept of women's participation and role in the Christian church. It is both controversial and thought provoking. It served as the seminal text in the analysis of woman and Christianity. This 25th anniversary edition, with new content, will keep it in the forefront of the feminist theology conversation.

Confronting the woeful legacy of a centuries'-old theology, Johnson shows how the beauty of our faith tradition is deepened by being rooted in ecological reality. She lays out the foundations in scripture, the teachings of Jesus, and the early Church for an understanding that emphasizes the love and mercy of God, showing how this approach can help us respond to a planet in peril.

The first-century Jewish woman Miriam of Nazareth, mother of Jesus, is the most celebrated female religious figure in the Christian tradition. Elizabeth Johnson offers an interpretation of Mary that is theologically sound, spiritually empowering, ethically challenging, socially liberating, and ecumenically fruitful. In particular, she sees the image of Mary as a blessing rather than a blight for women's lives in both religious and political terms.

If you read only one book on Mary in your lifetime, let this be the one. American Catholic Booksellers'

'Since the middle of the twentieth century, ' writes Elizabeth Johnson, 'there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there. Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.'

This book sets out the fruit of these discoveries. The first chapter describes Johnson's point of departure and the rules of engagement, with each succeeding chapter distilling a discrete idea of God. Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, Hispanic, interreligious, and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity.
'Since the middle of the twentieth century, ' writes Elizabeth Johnson, 'there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there. Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.'

This book sets out the fruit of these discoveries. The first chapter describes Johnson's point of departure and the rules of engagement, with each succeeding chapter distilling a discrete idea of God. Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, Hispanic, interreligious, and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity.

Elizabeth Johnson takes the 13 gospel appearances of Mary of Nazareth and creates a rich, deep Marian identity from this complex mosaic. Dangerous Memories is taken from her acclaimed Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (0-8264-1473-7), with the addition of a new introduction and a short annotated bibliography.

An examination of the relationship between faith in God and the concept of ecological care within a crisis of biodiversity.

For millennia plant and animal species have received little sustained attention as subjects of Christian theology and ethics in their own right. In Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, Elizabeth A. Johnson concludes that love of the natural world is an intrinsic element of faith in God and that far from being an add-on, ecological care is at the center of moral life.

Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of human being's relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief? The crisis of biodiversity in our day, when species are going extinct at more than 1,000 times the natural rate, renders this question acutely important.Standard perspectives need to be realigned; theology needs to look out of the window, so to speak as well as in the mirror.

While this derives from a Madeleva lecture of the same title that was delivered in 1993, the points made and updated by Elizabeth Johnson in this revised edition of Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit are even more pressing today. Since the 1990s, the environment has only been degraded more, and one could argue that the status of women has been eroded by the rise of religious fundamentalism in almost every culture. Johnson draws out the links between attitudes toward women and the way we treat the natural world around us. If nature is somehow perceived as feminine, then it is no surprise that it is heedlessly abused and used, especially when both women and the earth exist under the sovereignty of a patriarchal God.

Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ, holds a doctorate from The Catholic University of America and is distinguished professor of theology emerita at Fordham University in New York City.
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