In the search for a feminist christology, Rosemary R. Ruether has proposed the vision of Jesus as prophet and the tradition of spirit christologies as sources. This essay proposes combining prophetic and spirit christologies, re-membering Jesus as a prophet within a prophetic movement, as a sharer in the spirit with its women and men prophets. It asks the reader to make two major shifts in envisaging Jesus' career: first, to shift the locus of the spirit from the person of Jesus to the reign-of-God movement within which he acted; second, to see the preaching of God's reign as alternative not to the teaching of the “scribes and Pharisees” but to the imperial rule. These two shifts can help us to revise the question, “Can a male savior save women?” asking instead whether, in the spirit, [we who are] women can liberate ourselves from but also with our memories of Jesus.

Wedged in between interpretations of brief passages from Aquinas' introduction to his commentary on the Psalms and Johann Georg Hamann's Entkleidung und Verklärung, this essay argues that Israel's conception of God (which North American culture is poorly equipped to appreciate) must determine the fundamental form of prayer. This basic form is: the offering up to God, in praise and entreaty, of the whole world as well as of ourselves, along with all of our historic experience.

Mary O'Brien has inspired a vigorous reexamination of the concept and practices of reproduction. Her philosophy of birth reclaims this central female experience from the existentialist category of unconscious immanence. This article sketches O'Brien's theory and suggests how her reappraisal of reproductive process sheds light on the contradictions in traditional messages about biological difference, the nature of women, and the meaning of motherhood. It illustrates its claim by reading one such message, John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem, in light of O'Brien's work, and argues that using the bio-social process of reproduction as an analytic tool helps overcome dualisms and can further feminist insights into incarnation as a dynamic principle of creation. It invites further reflection on embodiment, birth, and motherhood as theological concepts.

The dominant practice among scholars in Religious Studies has been to exclude committed religious belief from the teaching of religion. Theology was once the center of the academic study of religion, but its present-day exclusion has deprived Religious Studies of a methodological center characteristic of a true academic discipline, and thus Religious Studies appears to be merely a marginal interdisciplinary program rather than a discipline in its own right. Theology was once taught in a denominational way that is inappropriate to the pluralism of a secular university. Another understanding of theology, however, is as a distinctive worldview offering a unifying perspective on life, a worldview which has the same rights on the campus as any other contemporary worldview. The presence of theology so understood would restore the methodological center to the discipline of Religious Studies and would enhance that intellectual pluralism to which the modern university is committed.

One does not read far or engage in a discussion about the complexity of the modern world without sensing an evolutionary vision which reflects the thought of Teilhard de Chardin. College students who are introduced to the Teilhardian vision respond in positive and creative ways. Teaching such a course reveals insights into young people's reaction to the present and future implications of a high-tech society. In an age of increasing control over the forces of nature by human-kind, crucial questions emerge. Two concerns attract students to Teilhard: fear of the future in terms of the direction and quality of human life; and an interest in the relationship between religion and science, which indicates substantive attitudes of a younger generation toward faith in God. Whether there is agreement with Teilhard is not the question, but the fact that he has pressed us to face the issues.