In the Image of Her: Recovering Motherhood in the Christian Tradition

The body of the mother is both everywhere and nowhere in the Christian imagination. Western Christianity has long viewed the mother's body as a vessel. Through her, nothing less than the sin and the salvation of all humanity entered history. Eve birthed children into sin, and the Virgin Mary brought forth the savior of the world. Christian theologians across the centuries have largely focused on these two idealized mothers at the expense of actual biological mothers. By the same token, mode...