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Finding God in Motherhood: Release or Trap?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Mary Pepper  and
Margaret Hebblethwaite
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It was easy to anticipate that there would be some criticisms of Margaret Hebblethwaite’s widely praised book “Motherhood and God” from conservative quarters, and what the criticism would be. And our publishing, in our last issue, of Deborah F. Middleton’s article “God as Mother—a necessary debate” has brought us letters from readers arguing that all who discern “motherhood” in God must be mistaken. But questions about Margaret Hebblethwaite’s book have not come solely from the right. Here Mary Pepper, one of the organizers of Christian Women’s Information and Resources (CWIRES), criticizes the book from a feminist perspective and the author replies. We shall be publishing a review which looks at the book from yet another perspective later.

Editor.

The publication of Motherhood and God by Margaret Hebblethwaite happened just as the Church of Scotland Study Group presented its controversial report on The Motherhood of God. So the book was launched amid the turbulence of dispute within the Scottish Church, evidence that the questions around gender and theology can no longer be ignored. The report, cautiously and reasonably, gives scriptural justification for describing God as Mother, but a minority of the group felt unable to agree that God might be properly addressed as Mother. (It was the outcry over a woman praying ‘Dear Mother God’ that caused the setting up of the Study Group.)

But in her very readable book, ‘about finding God in motherhood and motherhood in God’, Margaret Hebblethwaite has no difficulty at all.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 65 , Issue 771 , September 1984 , pp. 372 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Motherhood and God by Margaret Hebblethwaite, published by Geoffrey Chapman, London 1984.

2 Study Group Report The Motherhood of God ed. Alan Lewis, Saint Andrew Press 1984.

3 Motherhood and God, p. 21.

4 Ibid., p. 1.

5 Cf. e.g. Michele Barrett, Women's Oppression Today, Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis, Verso 1980; Mark Poster Critical Theory of the Family, Pluto 1978; Michele Barrett and Mary Mclntosh, The Anti-social Family, New Left Books 1982.

6 In an article in The Tablet, 26 November 1983.

7 Op. cit. p.76.

8 Susannah Herzel in ‘The Body is the Book’ p. 120, in a collection of ankles against the ordination of women, Man, Womon, and Priesthood, ed. P .Moore, SPCK 1978.

9 26 November 1983.

10 Motherhood and God p. 52.

11 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconsiructiotl of Christians Origins, SCM Press 1983, p. 86.

12 26 November 1983.