Search results for ""Author Ann Loades""

Mary, Mother of Jesus, has been the focus of much piety and theology down the centuries, and whatever it is she represents has been and remains central to the vitality of Christianity in many parts of the world. Grace is Not Faceless collects the essential writings and addresses on Mary by Ann Loades, one of the most important contributors to contemporary feminist Marian theology, especially from an Anglican perspective. Including both rare and original material spanning more than thirty years, this volume traces the trajectories of Loades’ distinctive writings on Mary; for example, her emphasis on Mary in the arts, her attention to the iconology of the Rabbula Gospels, and the key she finds to approaching the Mother of Jesus in Cornelius Ernst’s memorable phrase ’grace is not faceless’. It is prefaced with a substantial introduction by Stephen Burns, providing significant context both for the chapters and the wider work of Ann Loades herself.

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Some feminist women search for the roots of feminism in the recent past; others write the past off. Too many assume that religious traditions have nothing to offer feminism, so even when religious belief has been central to the inspiration of some of the most powerful campaigners for the value and worth of women, the significance of that belief has been ignored. Mary Wollstonecraft argued for the 'rights' of women'; Josephine Butler fought against the devaluation of women expressed in the Contagious Diseases Acts; Dorothy L. Sayers had a powerful sense of the way women and men grace one another's lives in their work. They all drew on the Christian tradition of their own times, but this has rarely been given weight. These women have not been considered together, nor as theologians, as here in Ann Loades's new book. In their life time, each of them opened up some painful issues: abortion and its significance in our shared social lives, forms of coercion, especially the sexual abuse of children, and the importance of women's work. Their courage and generosity offer salutary challenges to our own times. Feminist Theology will be of interest to all those concerned with contemporary theological questions as well as to students of feminism and the analysis of gender, in sociology, politics and the humanities.

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Reflecting on the particular challenges facing a schoolgirl of the 1950s attracted to the possibility of going to university to read Theology, and her path to becoming the first woman to be given a personal Chair at the University of Durham, Professor Emerita of Divinity at the same, an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews, and a CBE for services to Theology, Ann Loades introduces some of the key tenets of her theological thinking, including: theodicy; women in theology; worship; engagement with actual living; biography and theology in various writers.

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