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Rating: 
Summary: smart, thoughtful, caring, provocative
Review: Excellent! This well-written book stretches key questions in theology well beyond feminist concerns. Or, perhaps better put, the book shows how feminist concerns are far-reaching in theology. A very very caring and thoughtful book.
Rating:
Summary: Believer? Unbeliever? Skeptic? Read it!
Review: I've made my living as a writer and editor for a lot of years, so I'm speaking from some experience when I say I haven't encountered anything this well written in a long, long time. Theology was alien territory to me (maybe even enemy territory) when a friend recommended this book. Schneider explains the two principal underpinnings of feminist theology (the "metaphorical exemption," which says that all images of the divine are just limited human stabs at comprehending the divine and thus can be examined for how they reinforce socially and environmentally harmful attitudes and social structures, such as patriarchy and dualistic thinking; and "embodied experience," which is the direct "revelation" of the divine to individuals). She shows the strengths and problems within each, and the tension between them. It's not just lucid -- she evokes awe where that's appropriate, empathy where it is, and so on through a wide range of emotions. Including humor -- there are parts of this that are laugh-out-loud funny. The best part, for me, was in her argument that there's no incontrovertible basis for monotheism in scripture, and that monotheism may be the ultimate religious authorization for the harmful social constructions that any sensible person, feminist or not, would want to do away with. Her argument here has to be, for any thinking person who hasn't thought much about this particular topic, like a whack between the eyes with a two-by-four. It makes you rethink everything and experience everything -- not just religion, everything -- differently. At least that's the effect it had on me.
Rating:
Summary: smart, moving, provocative, caring
Review: This is an excellent, well written, and deeply thoughtful account of issues in theology far beyond feminism. Or, perhaps better put, Schneider shows how issues in feminism are far-reaching in theology. Highly recommended.
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