Religious Imagination of American Women

• AcknowledgementsForeword1. American Women as Religious Thinkers:Dissenting Participants 2. Ambivalence as a New Religious Virtue: The Creativity of Women's Contradictory Experiences of Their Traditions3. The Immanence of the Sacred: Women's Religious Thought Comes Down to Earth4. The Revelatory Power of the Ordinary and the Ordinariness of the Sacred5. "Relationship" and its Complexities:Inhabiting the Cosmic Web6. Healing and Women's Theological Creativity: Strategies of Hope Epilogue: *Apres le deluge* What's Next?EndnotesIndex

"Since there is not a long bibliography of works addressing the religious thought of women, Bednarowski (United Theol. Seminary of the Twin Cities) plows new ground. Although intimating that she speaks for all American women, Bednarowski primarily focuses on the thought of liberal Christian feminists writing in the last decade of the 20th century. In surveying a wide range of popular and scholarly publications, Bednarowski discerns five common themes or characteristics and devotes a chapter to each. According to Bednarowski, women's religious thought is (1) ambivalent, because it is produced by people who feel that they are both insiders and outsiders in their traditions, (2) characterized by an awareness of the immanence of the sacred, (3) down—to—earth and celebratory of the revelatory power of the ordinary, (4) characterized by themes of relationship and relatedness, and (5) pervaded by the idea of healing. Bednarowski argues that these themes constitute something of a worldview shared by women from a diverse range of communities, and her extensive examples seem to support this argument. Scholars will find that this exploration of women's public discourse about religious ideas helps to reveal the common threads that run through women's writing. Graduate students; faculty and researchers."—L. H. Hoyle, Georgetown College, Choice, May 2000"Scholars will find that this exploration of women's public discourse about religious ideas helps to reveal the common threads that run through women's writing.May 2000"—Choice