Meet the pioneers driving foundational Christian theological change—and restoring sacred value to women and girls—in pursuit of just and equal faith communities. Illustrates how bringing divine feminine imagery and language back into church has positive effects for the community beyond the sanctuary.
Rev. Jann Aldredge-Clanton, PhD
Paperback
6 x 9, 320 pp | 978-1-59473-573-8
Meet the ministers and laypeople driving foundational Christian theological change—restoring sacred value to women and girls—in pursuit of just and equal faith communities.
In a world filled with injustice and violence, we long for a new sacred symbolism to inspire transformation. This yearning includes a widespread hunger for female images of Deity—Wisdom, Divine Feminine, Mother Hen, Mother Eagle, God-She, and more—in church life and worship to restore gender-balance and finally achieve just, equal, and inclusive faith communities.
She Lives! presents fascinating narratives of clergy and laypeople who are changing the institutional church and society by restoring biblical female Divine names and images to Christian theology, worship symbolism, and liturgical language. Their stories reveal the connection between multicultural female Divine images in worship and justice in human relationships, illustrating Wisdom's works such as gender equality, racial equality, marriage equality, economic justice, care of creation, nonviolence, interfaith collaboration and expanding spiritual experience.
Ideal for laypeople and clergy to use in churches, ritual groups, retreats, workshops, conferences, academic classes and personal exploration, this book also provides creative, expansive, gender-balanced worship resources, including original hymns and locations of feminist emancipatory faith communities throughout the United States and Canada.
She Lives! invites readers to join the adventure of creating rituals that include the female Divine and to join communities that celebrate Her, affirming the sacred value of all people and all creation.
“She Lives! establishes Jann Aldredge-Clanton as the leading voice standing at the crossroads of feminist emancipatory theologies today.... A tour de force of engagement with the politics and imagination of theological liberation and faith expression…. Readers of this book will never be able to speak or think of deity and world in the same ways ever again.”
—Stephen V. Sprinkle, PhD, professor of practical theology and director of field education and supervised ministry, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University
“When we first acknowledged the Divine as female in our sacred rites and liberating rituals, we never imagined we would live to see a time such as this. She not only lives, She is everywhere.”
—Miriam Therese Winter, PhD, professor and director, Women’s Leadership Institute, Hartford Seminary
“Inspiring…. Draws on a rich diversity of voices to show that female images of God are essential to gender equality and social justice.”
—Rosemary Radford Ruether, PhD, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California
“Challenges [us] to remember that too many people, wherever they are on the gender-identity spectrum, still suffer from a hierarchical vision of the Divine that is overwhelmingly male.... Bring[s] hope and healing to those who have felt excluded for far too long.”
—Dr. Deborah Sokolove, director, Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion, Wesley Theological Seminary; coauthor, Calling on God: Inclusive Christian Prayers for Three Years of Sundays
“An important book chronicling a revolution in Christianity—the reclaiming of the Divine Feminine; a revolution that must be duplicated in other faiths as well. Read the book. Join the revolution.”
—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author, Embracing the Divine Feminine: Finding God through the Ecstasy of Physical Love—The Song of Songs Annotated & Explained
“Helps us realize that it is not lone feminists who have found Her! Plenty of so-called ‘mainline’ religions include congregations and groups that take seriously inclusive worship, and that require a full array of ways to understand Godde. Brava!”
—Dr. Carolyn Stahl Bohler, author, God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God and God Is Like a Mother Hen and Much, Much More
“An impressively diverse and accomplished community of church leaders…. Not merely a feminist rally cry, it gives us a glimpse of a tidal wave of grassroots passion to re-member the fullness and wholeness of the Divine. Our wounded world cannot be healed until this wholeness has been restored.”
—Kathe Schaaf, coeditor, Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power
