Mother holle

Sometimes she appears as the beautiful White Woman, floating or hovering above the surface of her pond. At other times, however, she is invisible. Then one hears only the pealing of her bells and other dark rumblings from deep beneath the surface “Mother Holle's Pond”

Whenever it snowed in the olden days, people in Hessia used to say, “Mother Holle is making her bed” Grimms' note to “Mother Holle”     

Mother Mary Ann Wright

The role of African-American women in community service and social activism is well known. In this paper, the researcher provides a case study of a present-day African-American social activist and makes comparisons with the community service experiences of other African-American women in the past. Mother Mary Ann Wright describes herself as a servant of God. As with other African-American women, it is God who provides her identity and sense of purpose. Likewise, because she serves God, she has status in her community. Mother Wright is an exceptional woman-born in abject poverty, having pulled herself up by her bootstraps-all the while listening to the voice of God, she has founded missions throughout the world and is best known for her work in feeding the hungry in the parks of Oakland, California. She gives all credit for her accomplishments to God. However unique and outstanding, Mother Wright also epitomizes a long tradition of African-American women whose spirituality directed their service to their fellow human beings. The list is long and the variety of these women is great-the well educated leaders as well as the ordinary-Pauli Murray, Mary McLeod Bethune, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and thousands of other African-American women have dedicated their lives to uplifting the race and improving the human condition. The story of Mother Wright, a special and exceptional women in her own right, nevertheless confirms the continuation of the tradition of spirituality and public service among African-American women.     

White Women and the Dark Mother

One of the foremost champions of the ‘Dark Mother’ today is the overwhelmingly white feminist spirituality movement, based in the United States and Europe. Over the past twenty-five years, white spiritual feminists have approached the figure of the Dark Mother, which is borrowed from Hindu, African and Christian sources, with a uniquely fraught mix of longing, envy, hope, fear and guilt. This article first discusses the explicit justifications that white spiritual feminists offer for the incorporation of the Dark Mother into their religiosity, including their analysis of how the concepts of ‘lightness’ and ‘darkness’ are deployed and gendered in patriarchal religions. It then argues that, contrary to spiritual feminist claims, the Dark Mother as such does not exist cross-culturally but is rather the joint creation of the history of religions, Jungian psychology and spiritual feminist ingenuity, and that she is constructed and utilised primarily as a means of working through white racial guilt.     

White Women and the Dark Mother

One of the foremost champions of the ‘Dark Mother’ today is the overwhelmingly white feminist spirituality movement, based in the United States and Europe. Over the past twenty-five years, white spiritual feminists have approached the figure of the Dark Mother, which is borrowed from Hindu, African and Christian sources, with a uniquely fraught mix of longing, envy, hope, fear and guilt. This article first discusses the explicit justifications that white spiritual feminists offer for the incorporation of the Dark Mother into their religiosity, including their analysis of how the concepts of ‘lightness’ and ‘darkness’ are deployed and gendered in patriarchal religions. It then argues that, contrary to spiritual feminist claims, the Dark Mother as such does not exist cross-culturally but is rather the joint creation of the history of religions, Jungian psychology and spiritual feminist ingenuity, and that she is constructed and utilised primarily as a means of working through white racial guilt.     

A Theory of Art

Book Information A Theory of Art. A Theory of Art Berger Karol Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 287 Hardback By Berger Karol. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Pp. 287. Hardback:,     

Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens

Book reviewed:
Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens by Bernd Wannenwetsch, translated by Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) xiv + 402 pp. Reviewed by M. Therese Lysaught Department of Religious Studies 300 College Park University of Dayton Dayton, OH 45469-1530 USA     

Gandhi's Philosophy of Education

Book Information Gandhi's Philosophy of Education. Gandhi's Philosophy of Education Glynn Richards Oxford Oxford University Press 2001 viii + 118 Hardback By Glynn Richards. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Pp. viii + 118. Hardback:,     

Space curvature and repeatable properties,almost no problems with a peaceful coexistence

Book Information On Virtue Ethics. On Virtue Ethics Rosalind Hursthouse Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 ix + 275 Hardback £25 By Rosalind Hursthouse. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Pp. ix + 275. Hardback:£25,     

The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom

Book Information The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom. The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom Chandran Kukathas, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003, xii + 292, £25.00 (cloth), US $45.00 (cloth) By Chandran Kukathas. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Pp. xii + 292. £25.00 (cloth:), US $45.00 (cloth:),     

The Moral and Political Status of Children

Book Information The Moral and Political Status of Children. The Moral and Political Status of Children David Archard, Colin M. Macleod, eds., Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press, 2002, viii + 296, US$60 (cloth). Edited by David Archard;, Colin M. Macleod;, eds.. Oxford University Press. Oxford and New York. Pp. viii + 296. US$60 (cloth).,     

Illness Narrative, Depression, and Sainthood: An Analysis of the Writings of Mother Teresa

In 2007, the letters of The Blessed Mother Teresa to her confessors were published for the public in a book entitled Come Be My Light. What surprised many readers was that Mother Teresa felt very distant from God and described feeling great “darkness” for many years. This paper draws parallels between the writings of Mother Teresa and those of writers’ illness narratives describing the psychiatric condition of Depression. The author provides this textual analysis to explore Mother Teresa’s experience within a psychiatric paradigm (Major Depressive Disorder), in comparison with and contrast to the spiritual paradigm of a “Dark Night of the Soul.”     

Critical Notices

Powers: A Study in Metaphysics . GEORGE MOLNAR, edited by STEPHEN MUMFORD. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 238.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination . Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2002, 126pp. £12.99 pb., £35.00 hb. Reviewed by Ryan Patrick Murphy King's College, London
Sarah Coakley, ed., Rethinking Gregory of Nyssa . Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003, 137pp. £17.99 Reviewed by Ivor J. Davidson University of Otago
Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology, West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, xiv + 251pp. £40.00 Reviewed by Demetrios Bathrellos London
Adam Hood, Baillie, Oman and Macmurray: Experience and Religious Belief . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, 226pp. £47.50 hb. Reviewed by John Flett Princeton Theological Seminary
Donald K. McKim, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, £16.99 pb. Reviewed by Graham Tomlin Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
Oliver O'Donovan and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics Past and Present . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004, 330 pp., $35.00 / £24.99 Reviewed by Dustin Resch Briercrest College and Seminary Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada
Peter Scott, A Political Theology of Nature . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 275pp. £47.50 hb., £17.95 pb. Reviewed by Ryan Patrick Murphy King's College, London
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, 368pp. £22.95 Reviewed by Rod Taylor Oxford
Stephan van Erp, The Art of Theology: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics and the Foundations of Faith . Leuven: Peeters, 2004, 297pp., $40 Reviewed by Brian Horne London
Nigel Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace , Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, xviii + 348pp. £53.00 Reviewed by Rowan A. Greer New Haven, Connecticut     

REVIEW

Book reviewed:
Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; paperback, 2003), pp. 540, £15.50 Review by Gerald Lang St Catherine's College Oxford OX1 3UJ gerald.lang@philosophy.ox.ac.uk     

Political Choice in Britain

Books reviewed:
Political Choice in Britain. By Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul Whiteley. Oxford University Press. Oxford, U.K. 2004. 371 pp. Reviewed by Jerrold G. Rusk University of Illinois at Chicago     

On the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity

Philosophical Studies - Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’ (Modality and tense: philosophical papers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp...     

The principle of recombination and the principle of distinctness: A puzzle for Armstrong's theory of modality

Book Information Agency and Responsibility: A Common-Sense Moral Psychology. Agency and Responsibility: A Common-Sense Moral Psychology Jeanette Kennett New York Oxford University Press 2001 viii + 229 Hardback US$45 By Jeanette Kennett. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. viii + 229. Hardback:US$45,     

REVIEWS

DAVID KNOWLES: A MEMOIR by Dom Adrian Moray. Darton, Longman & Todd
THE EVANGELICAL ANGLICAN IDENTITY PROBLEM: AN ANALYSIS by J. I. Packer. Latimer House, Oxford 1978. pp
THE INTEGRITY OF ANGLICANISM by Stephen W. Sykes. Mowbrays, London and Oxford 1978. pp
CHRISTIANITY AND THE WORLD ORDER by Edward Norman. Oxford University Press
OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY IN OUTLINE by Walther Zimmerli, trans     

Moms Hating Moms: The Internalization of Mother War Rhetoric

Work status and mothering are culturally constructed as rigid binaries. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect on mothers of these polarized characterizations of motherhood and to assess the social support mothers perceive they receive for their mother identity. This study, based on interview data collected from 98 married mothers of preschool children, demonstrated that Mother War rhetoric is most extensively internalized by at-home mothers. The majority of mothers perceived a lack of cultural support for their mother role, though the impact of cultural Mother War rhetoric was buffered or exacerbated by mothers' social support systems. The lack of adequate support from other mothers, spouses, parents, and in-laws led mothers to binary constructions of worker–mother identity. This, in turn, led mothers to seek support within shared contexts, which further separated at-home and employed mother from each other and separated mothers from the support of their parents.     

Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness

Book Information Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness Levine Joseph New York Oxford University Press 2001 204 Hardback £22.50 By Levine Joseph. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. 204. Hardback:£22.50,