With Oil in Their Lamps: Faith, Feminism, and the Future (Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality)
In these lectures, which provide a broad survey of the influence of feminism on society and the Church, Schneiders (New Testament and spirituality, Jesuit Sch. of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA) describes feminism as a movement toward structurally determined equality through self-possession, agency, and self-determination, which brings change in gender relations and new images of women as athletes and as scholars. "Recognition of the other, equality, mutuality, relationality, interdependence, and cooperation are beginning to appear as a human way of being," she writes. These values, she shows, have influenced the Church in many areas of ministry, liturgy, and scholarship. They have also helped people envision a more democratic organization, an area pioneered by women's religious orders, which has empowered individuals and wrested control of women's lives from priests and bishops, affecting both liturgy and jobs. Schneiders proposes that challenges for the future include transcending dualism and developing prophetic leadership in a rapidly changing world. The ideas in this well-written text are sound, well reasoned, and grounded in experience. Recommended for seminary and public libraries.-Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, VACopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.