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Melanie L. Harris dives into the spirituality and life work of Alice Walker, literary genius and poet. Through the lens of Womanist ethics, Harris takes an inside look into the virtues and values that can be lifted from a study of Walker s non-fiction work. This work enlivens the debate in African and African American religious thought about the fluidity of spirituality and widens the conversation to encourage readers to embrace religious traditions inclusive of and beyond Christianity as the fo...

When in 1570 the widow Marie Du Drac took to a life of godly devotion, fasting, wearing hairshirts, and doing good works at hospitals, prisons, and with the poor, her contemporaries thought her behavior bizarre. Her family and friends worried for her health. Although not a nun, this elite Parisian spend hours every day in contemplative prayer and related to her spiritual advisors her mystical visions and sins against God. While Du Drac's ascetic practices and penitential spirituality were consid...

A multifaceted sourcebook telling the powerful story of reconciliation, celebration and struggle for LGBTQI inclusion across the American religious landscape. "No matter what stage in the process of change, religious belief is unveiled in all its dynamism in this book...Wrestling with issues and struggling for better understanding of one's fellow human beings is at the center of every religion, no matter how old or new, narrow or expansive, Western or Eastern, that religion is. The struggle itse...

The book investigates Ben Sira's attitudes toward all matters pertaining to sexuality in the context of family relations and gender issues. The author's seemingly negative attitude to women, the anxiety expressed in the discussions of marital and extramarital relations, and the disciplining of children can lead to the assumption that the work has a negative attitude toward sexuality. Ben Sira's book is a combination of carefully composed wisdom poems and of teachings on everyday issues, includi...

The Oxford Handbook of the Minor Prophets provides a clear and engaging one-volume guide to the major interpretative questions currently engaging scholars of the twelve Minor Prophets by collecting 40 essays by both established and emerging scholars who explore a wide range of methodological perspectives. Divided into four sections, the first group of essays is devoted to historical studies which consider the manuscript evidence for these books and overview debates about how, when, and by whom t...

In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submiss...

This book examines some of the ways in which sexuality has been described and interpreted in the West. The main models examined are: the Christian view of sex as sinful; the psychoanalytical model, including such notions as the sexual drive, infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and the distinction between male and female sexuality; the 'social construction' model, which proposes that 'sexuality' is a modern concept; and the links between sexuality and spirituality. There is also some consid...

This book considers the changing nature of both religion and welfare in Europe. It is the second of two volumes. Together they examine the function of majority churches as agents of social welfare in eight European societies (Sweden, Finland, Norway, England, Germany, France, Italy and Greece). Volume 2 explores the connections between religion and welfare from three perspectives: sociology, gender and theology. The authors ask new questions about the religious and the secular and the implicati...