WATER Recommends: Fall 2025
Boursier, Helen T. HANDBOOK OF WOMEN’S STUDIES IN RELIGION. London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, 416 pages, $48.54.
Women’s Studies colleagues have often written off religion as hopelessly patriarchal, a drag on the operation of women’s empowerment. This collection leaves no doubt that religion, when understood through a critical feminist hermeneutic, can also be a helpful resource in the larger project of liberation. Writers including Jacqueline J. Lewis, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, Marie M. Fortune, Heather Eaton, Christine Pae, Patricia Carbine, Zayn Kassam among others make the case in a variety of religious settings.
Burbach, Nicolete and Lisa Sowle Cahill. TRANS LIFE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TODAY. London: T&T Clark, 2024 (367 pages, $190). See also Transreads for an available online version.
https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/2024-11-01_6724e6f436b10_9780567706959_web.pdf
The Catholic Church has lots of learning and growing to do about the lives of trans people to minimize its harm and maximize its help as society at large increasingly embraces diverse human beings. As the late Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan said about other matters, the Church usually arrives “a little breathless and a little late.” This primer helps to speed that process with welcome inclusion of non-Catholic resources.
Chaudhuri, Soma and Jane Ward. THE WITCH STUDIES READER. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2025, 520 pages, $29.95.
“Who are the witches? Where do they come from? Maybe your great grandmother was one” is a favorite feminist chant. This deep dive into feminist witch studies starts from “a decolonial feminist perspective” to analyze critically how witches have been mis/understood. The essays touch on “witches as keepers of suppressed knowledges, manifesters of new futures, exemplars of praxis, and theorists in their own right…” This book explores historical and contemporary figures who are more often maligned than celebrated.
Copeland, M. Shawn. ENFLESHING FREEDOM: BODY, RACE, AND BEING. Second Edition, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2023, 203 pages, $26.
This signal volume has been updated from the 2009 version to a new, significantly changed edition that is well worth reading. The updates are generally painful, especially the lynching of Black women, but that history needs reporting. The result is a fresh book that invites serious and sustained study as a resource for justice-making.
Cromer, Risa. CONCEIVING CHRISTIAN AMERICA: EMBRYO ADOPTION AND REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS. New York: New York University Press, 2023 (295 pages, $32).
White Christian Nationalists have found their way to fertility clinics to adopt remaining embryos. The result is a further entrenching of white evangelical values a la the Dobbs decision. This important book bears reading to understand and challenge what it means to “conceive a Christian nation” in many senses of the term.
Dyer, Mary. WALLS OR WINDOWS: ARE THE DEAF AND LGBT COMMUNITIES “WHOLLY OTHER” OR “HOLY OTHER”? Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, 2025 (174 Pages, $21).
Theologies of disability are some of the strongest current offerings in theology today. Mary Dyer’s is a welcome and helpful contribution. She contrasts the two communities and their intersections. She moves the theological conversation another step by her careful consideration of the scriptural and pastoral issues involved. Read and discuss.
Emily Reimer-Barry. REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: ADVANCING PRAGMATIC SOLIDARITY WITH PREGNANT WOMEN. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2024 (287 pages, $29).
Black women have developed the reproductive justice framework which dovetails with many Catholic values: welcoming as many children as a family wants; having no children at all (including using birth control and abortion which many Roman Catholics support despite the institutional church’s opposition); and having the right to the economic and social means to provide for children’s well-being. The author demonstrates how supporting women’s reproductive choices is an obvious good. Future studies will offer more robust affirmation, but this is an obvious and much-needed start.
Schumm, Darla. HEALING ABLEISM: STORIES ABOUT DISABILITY AND RELIGIOUS LIFE. New Jersey, USA: Rutgers University Press, 2025, 192 pages, $27.95.
Most people encounter disability at some point in their lives, either in their own bodies or through a friend or loved one. Religious teachings and metaphors are often used to explain the presence of disability, but rarely do we hear the voices of people living with disabilities reflecting on their experiences of God, faith, or religious life. Darla Schumm explores the stories of people with disabilities who struggle with the human challenges of faith and doubt, exclusion and inclusion, injustice and justice. She invites readers to reflect on the experiences of people with disabilities in religious communities and organizations. She argues that it is not disability that needs healing. It is ableism that needs healing. “Accessible love” is her insightful suggestion for the way forward.