Anna Fisk

‘To Make, and Make Again’: Feminism, Craft and Spirituality:

The spiritual significance of ‘craft’, particularly the everyday acts of making in the ‘feminine’ sphere, has been neglected in mainstream theology and romanticized in feminist discourse. Drawing on literature, feminist theory and personal experience, this article considers how traditionally female crafts, such as knitting and sewing, are a form of self-expression, and a ‘being at home in the world’ which is both spiritually and politically empowering.

Stood weeping outside the tomb: dis(re)membering Mary Magdalene

This chapter concerns the task of mourning and re-membering in feminist scholarship, imaged through the Gospel narratives of Mary Magdalene weeping at the empty tomb of Jesus. It reads biblical scholar Jane Schaberg’s efforts at feminist historical reconstruction of Mary Magdalene’s witness to the resurrection, along with novelist Michele Roberts’s reflections on the impossibility of feminist revisioning. Alongside this scholarly mourning, I tell my own Easter story, of my friend’s death in our early twenties. Fragments from feminist biblical scholarship and literature, placed alongside bits of autobiography are pieced together to produce a collage that maintains the necessity of mourning and the inevitable failure of feminist revisioning.

Appropriating, Romanticizing and Reimagining: Pagan Engagements with Indigenous Animism

This chapter explores the tension between cosmopolitanism and indigeneity in contemporary Pagan engagements with the animism of indigenous cultures. Fisk discusses three modes whereby Pagan “new animism” may risk Western imperialism: first, through direct appropriation of indigenous beliefs and practices; second, through a romanticized, essentialized view of indigenous cultures; and third, through a reimagining of indigenous cosmologies as “one’s own heritage”—the mythic and religious traditions of Europe (as in Heathenism and Druidry). She argues that attempts to heal the wounds of modernity and “return” to a state of authentic connection with nature should not appropriate the worldviews of indigenous peoples—as salvific symbols or in the pretense that they are the same as those of the European past—without attending to indigenous political realities.

Bible and literature, by Alison M. Jack

Laura Christianson is a Christian and an adoptive mother of two children with an open adoption relationship with their birth mothers. She is the founder of the Heartbeat Infertility and Adoption Ministry—a churchbased infertility and adoption support network in the Seattle area affiliated with the Presbyterian Church—and offers her insights as a friendly “been there, done that” adoption guru. The purpose of the book, as the author states, is to inspire and equip the readers in their efforts to “follow God’s will to minister to those touched by adoption” (p. xiv). While the book is not based on research, it has merit as a peer resource. The 111-page paperback volume is very reader friendly and is written with clarity and wit. The format is easy to navigate, with practical tips on the possible types of adoption-related support groups that may be considered and the nuts and bolts of organizing the network—complete with instructions on how to write a mission statement, obtain organizational support, structure a budget, and recruit leadership—all laid out. Her section on identifying and recruiting members is especially well written. Her discussion of getting support from the religious leadership is also very helpful and realistic. She provides additional ideas and resources for establishing an adoption library, creating a mentoring program, setting up and maintaining an online venue, holding workshops, and hosting social events and even baby item exchanges. Each section is followed by a work sheet to transform knowledge into action. In addition, Christianson provides a list

Through Us, With Us, In Us: relational theologies in the twenty-first century, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Elaine Bellchambers

Though the title may suggest a strictly theological discussion of sex work based on relevant biblical texts, Avaren Ipsen’s dissertation Sex Working and the Bible is much more of an ‘‘interdisciplinary project that draws upon the fields of biblical studies, critical social theory, and liberation theology as they intersect and reflect upon the issues of poverty and sexuality’’ (p. 4). Ipsen makes her stance clear from the start, explicitly stating in the introduction that the goal of the book is to ‘‘provide a preferential option to sex workers,’’ and so ‘‘the orientation of this study is always on how to produce sex worker positive interpretations’’ (pp. 7–8). She also defines specific intended audiences for her work, namely, liberation-oriented scholars with whom she hopes to promote dialogue and solidarity and ‘‘those interested in including prostitutes into broader analyses of oppression’’ (p. 7). Ipsen’s directness and lucidity in communication remains a strength throughout the book and readers will find her research footnotes helpful as well. However, if the provocative cover art were not enough of a hint, let this review confirm that Ipsen is not kidding when it comes to limiting the scope of her intended audience. Readers who fall outside of the categories mentioned above, especially those of a more traditional orthodox or evangelical persuasion, will most likely disagree with Ipsen’s theoretical foundation, methodology, exegesis, and conclusions. Such readers will find very little of value to glean from the book other than perhaps a resolve to listen more attentively to the voices of real sex workers and the injustices they face. Feminist and liberation-oriented scholars, on the other hand, will likely find Ipsen’s dissertation insightful and challenging as she calls liberationists to examine their own potential blind spots concerning female sexual morality. Chapter one provides a useful and well-written introduction to Sex Working and the Bible, outlining Ipsen’s direction and purposes for the book. The straightforward approach that Ipsen chooses to take in this introductory chapter is welcome, since it gives scholarly readers the ability to determine within the first twelve pages whether this book suits their purposes or not. There is nothing worse than devoting one’s time to reading hundreds of pages only to find out it that a book does not contain the information one thought it did! Thankfully, Ipsen has spared her readers from such a fate. In the second chapter Ipsen examines liberation theology’s ‘‘preferential option for the poor’’ and how this option ‘‘has not been extended fully to prostitutes, a subcategory of the poor and oppressed’’ (p. 13). Along the way, she rejects what she terms the ‘‘abolitionist approach’’ taken by many feminists and others who desire to help prostitutes (pp. 28229). Feminist ‘‘abolitionists’’ understand prostitution largely in terms of ‘‘sexual slavery’’ (p. 20), but Ipsen disagrees with the implications of the image of prostitutes as victims. While she agrees that ‘‘many prostitutes are severely victimized,’’ Ipsen feels that the victim image ‘‘is counterproductive to the liberation project’’ and furthermore ‘‘can clash with the prostitutes’ own view of themselves: that of agent and protagonist’’ (p. 20). Instead, she prefers to adopt a prostitutes’ rights framework, focusing on ‘‘the liberating agency of sex workers themselves’’ (p. 29). Particularly informative and persuasive in this chapter is the brief ‘‘Excursus on Decriminalization’’ section, which offers a description of legal approaches to prostitution around the world and how these government practices compare to decriminalization (pp. 43–48). Chapter two also contains an explanation of feminist theology & sexuality, Vol. 18 No. 2, 2012, 138–172

Feminism and Christianity: Questions and Answers in the Third-Wave, by Caryn D. Riswold

Drawing on a lifetime of sociological scholarship and leading critical engagement in the field of family studies, David Morgan returns to the concept of ‘family practices’ that he first proposed 15 years ago in his seminal text Family connections (1996). Family connections shaped UK family sociology. It shifted attention onto everyday lived experience (practices) and how these make families (in all their various forms and manifestations) through ordinary activities. The term ‘family practices’ is widely acknowledged as the signature of David Morgan, informing innumerable studies thereafter both within and beyond the field of family studies. In this eagerly awaited text Rethinking family practices, as the title suggests, Morgan revisits and elaborates the term. He traces the theoretical antecedents of the concept and examines some of the ways that it has been deployed in his own and others’ research. In this, as ever, Morgan is generous and insightful in his analysis. The crux of the argument that runs throughout this book is the need to retain a focus on families as a central feature in people’s lived experience and how a ‘practices approach’ facilitates understanding of the different dimensions that come together around the doing of family. Morgan’s advancement of a family practices approach has been overwhelmingly well received and as such any criticisms are few and limited in scope. He directly addresses these (and other areas that he has identified) early on in the book, including how the broad brushstrokes of family practices can obscure social divisions such as class and gender, the extent to which heteronormativity is embedded in the term, the need to extend the analytical scope of family practices beyond the West and Anglo-phonic countries, and to pay attention to the impact of policy and wider public discourses on family in everyday life. In later chapters he speaks directly to several of these areas in the examples that he selects and the analytical attention he affords these illustrations. In the first few chapters of the book Morgan maps out the concept of family practices and locates it within scholarship on intimacy, personal relationships and broader work that utilises the analytical lens of practices to interrogate people’s lived experience. In the following chapters he identifies three main areas for further elaboration, demonstrating how the ‘practices approach’ has been particularly fruitful in opening out private life to the sociological gaze; these areas are time and space, the body and embodiment, and emotions. In the first of these he demonstrates some of the ways that time and space structure, shape and are constituted through everyday family practices. These spatial and temporal dimensions are carried through into the following chapter on embodiment and the ‘relational body’ (p. 90). Morgan suggests that, in families, the corporeal self is not understood in individualistic terms but through interactions with other family members. The themes of these two chapters are extended in his analysis of emotions in

‘Not Simple, Not Pure’: Revisioning of Mythical Wicked Women in the Stories of Sara Maitland

The British novelist, feminist and religious thinker Sara Maitland (b.1950) is renowned for her short stories, many of which involve the rewriting of fairy tale and classical and biblical myth. This article situates Maitlands retellings within the contemporary feminist tradition of literary revisioning, but emphasises that her retelling of old tales is distinguished by a deep—and often discomforting—engagement with questions of morality. This is rooted in Maitlands political commitment and Christian faith, and is particularly evident in her treatment of mythical female evil. Her short stories take a morally ambiguous approach, paying attention to the moral and psychological complexities of the wicked stepmothers in fairy tale, gorgons and child-killers of classical myth, and temptresses of the Hebrew Bible. Maitlands feminist revisioning of mythical wicked women does not flinch from their darkness, or impose simple ethical lessons, but at the same time she is (sometimes horribly) aware of their moral significance. This article examines the portrayal of feminist theologys concept of the ‘female sin’ of passivity in Maitlands revisioning of Delilah (in Daughter of Jerusalem, 1978) and ‘Helen of Troys Aerobics Class’ (in On Becoming A Fairy Godmother, 2003); how the crimes of mythical wicked women are retold as being motivated by revenge against men in ‘Deborah and Jael’ (Daughter of Jerusalem), ‘Siren Song’ and ‘The Swallow and the Nightingale’ (Far North and Other Dark Tales, 2008). The latter of these raises issues of womens conflicting loyalties, which is also considered in ‘The Swans’ (2008). The taboos of incest and child abuse are explored powerfully and sensitively in ‘Jocasta’ (2003) and ‘The Wicked Stepmothers Lament’ (A Book of Spells, 1987), and resistance to simplistic moralising is encapsulated in the story of a menopausal Eve, in ‘Choosing Paradise’ (2003).