Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition

by Laura Hobgood-Oster

Overview

Analysis of animals in the history of the Christian tradition has been exclusively symbolic, but Laura Hobgood-Oster utilizes the feminist perspective in her examination of the impact of animal presence. In challenging the metaphoric reading of animals that reinforces human superiority and dominance, Holy Dogs and Asses

underscores animal agency.

Creatures play various active roles, which Hobgood-Oster categorizes as exemplars of piety, sources of revelation, saintly martyrs, and the primary other in an intimate relationship. Drawing from rich oral histories, legends, artwork, and popular stories of saints, this study directs our attention to the animal body—also a central concern of Christian theology and feminist criticism. Hobgood-Oster invites the reader to venture beyond the exclusive symbolic nature of animals in the Christian tradition to an awareness that we can know ourselves more fully by reference to the animal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252032134
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	02/08/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Laura Hobgood-Oster is the Elizabeth Root Paden Chair in Religion at Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, and author of "She Glanceth from Earth to Heaven": The Phenomenon of Love Mysticism among Women in Antebellum Virginia and Maryland.

Table of Contents

Preface     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Weaving and Roaring: Animals and a Religious Studies-Centered Methodological Bricolage     1
Guardians of the Gateway: Shifting Historical Settings for Christianity and Animals     21
The Ephesian Lion and Clay Sparrows: Animals in the Christian Canon and Early Apocryphal Traditions     42
Counted among the Saints: Animals in Medieval Hagiography     63
The Granted Image: Dogs in Christian Story and Art     81
Animals Return to the Sanctuary: Blessings of Animals in Contemporary American Culture     107
Animals Are Good to Think: Transforming Theological Considerations of Animals     129
Epilogue     147
Notes     149
Bibliography     163
Index     171

Editorial Reviews

"A welcome contribution to the growing field of animals and religion. . . . Recommended."—Choice

“Raises some important theological and historical questions about the role of animals in the Christian tradition, questions that encourage thoughtful reflection among people of faith.”—Religious Studies Review

"A pioneering study."—Church History

"Laura Hobgood-Oster's incisive contribution to the emerging field of 'religion and animals' is at once scholarly and caring—this remarkable volume models for all of us how valuable new works on the issue of nonhumans in the Christian tradition can be."—Paul F. Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy, Tufts University, and coeditor of A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics

"This study persuasively analyzes popular visual images in an effort to recover the lost significance of animals in Christian iconography. Hobgood-Oster's search in Christian history for a realization of the animal as more than mere sacred symbol is very important."—Belden C. Lane, Theological Studies, Saint Louis University

From the Publisher