Motherhood as Metaphor - (Bordering Religions: Concepts, Conflicts, and Conversations) by Jeannine Hill Fletcher (Hardcover)

About the Book

This volume takes women's voices and experiences as the primary data for thinking about interfaith encounter in the modern world. It places original work on women in mission, the secular women's movement and women in interreligious dialogue in conversation with theological anthropology, feminist theory and theology.

Book Synopsis

Who is my neighbor? As our world has increasingly become a single place, this question posed in the gospel story is heard as an interreligious inquiry. Yet studies of encounter across religious lines have largely been framed as the meeting of male leaders. What difference does it make when women's voices and experiences are the primary data for thinking about interfaith engagement?

Motherhood as Metaphor draws on three historical encounters between women of different faiths: first, the archives of the Maryknoll Sisters working in China before World War II; second, the experiences of women in the feminist movement around the globe; and third, a contemporary interfaith dialogue group in Philadelphia. These sites provide fresh ways of thinking about our being human in the relational, dynamic messiness of our sacred, human lives.

Each part features a chapter detailing the historical, archival, and ethnographic evidence of women's experience in interfaith contact through letters, diaries, speeches, and interviews of women in interfaith settings. A subsequent chapter considers the theological import of these experiences, placing them in conversation with modern theological anthropology, feminist theory, and theology. Women's experience of motherhood provides a guiding thread through the theological reflections recorded here. This investigation thus offers not only a comparative theology based on believers' experience rather than on texts alone but also new ways of conceptualizing our being human. The result is an interreligious theology, rooted in the Christian story but also learning across religious lines.

Review Quotes

"Jeannine Hill Fletcher's research in this work is ingenious and original. She
discovered examples of distinctively women's experience, brought extensive
theological knowledge and penetrating reflection to bear on it, and generated
new insight to our understanding of human existence and Christian mission.
This well-written book documents unique contributions to interreligious dialogue on the part of women. Outstanding."

-----Roger Haight, Union Theological Seminary

". . . a major contribution to an evolving field."-----S. Mark Heim, Andover Newton Theological School

About the Author

Jeannine Hill Fletcher is Associate Professor of Theology at Fordham University and the author of Monopoly on Salvation? A Feminist Approach to Religious Pluralism.