Charlotte Allen

Next to Julius Caesar, Pontius Pilate”the governor of Judea who sent Jesus to the cross”is probably the best-known Roman citizen who ever lived. His name is etched into the Christian creeds, prompting some fallen-away Christians to quip that “crucified under Pontius Pilate” is . . . . Continue Reading »

Most people know St. Teresa of Ávila (1515“1582), the Spanish mystic, prolific spiritual writer, and indomitable Carmelite reformer, largely through the High Mannerist statue that Gian Lorenzo Bernini carved of her in Rome about seventy years after her death: a marble“pale woman of . . . . Continue Reading »

Predicting the future usually means extrapolating today’s fashions into long-term trends. In the early 1970s I read an article prophesying that by the year 2000 (now!) there would be no more broccoli. The idea was that since frozen and powdered foods, the latest innovations in their field, had . . . . Continue Reading »

Catherine of Siena By Giuliana Cavallini, O.P. Cassell Academic. 163 pp. $60 cloth, $21.50 The Flowing Light of the Godhead By Mechthild of Magdeburg; Translated and introduced by Frank Tobin Paulist. 373 pp. $34.95 Joan of Arc: Her Story By Regine Pernoud and Marie“Veronique Clin. Translated . . . . Continue Reading »

Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality by Philip G. Davis Spence, 418 pages, $29.95 It is a dogma of feminist mythology that before there was God, there was Goddess. A very long time ago (so goes the story), when war, agriculture, and patriarchy were just glints in male . . . . Continue Reading »

The Women’s Bible Commentary edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe Westminster/John Knox Press, 396 pages, $20 Like most children of my era who got a religious education, I grew up on Bible stories. The stories of the women in the Bible”rare as pearls of great price among the . . . . Continue Reading »

Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution by Steven Ozment Doubleday, 270 pages, $20 I am a Catholic, but I married Protestant. My husband has steeped me in Protestant lore: Protestants get results. Protestants think ahead. Protestants save (Catholics spend). My Protestant in-laws had to endure our . . . . Continue Reading »

Belonging To The Universe by Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast Harper San Francisco, 217 pages, $18.95 In 1975, Fritjof Capra, an Austrian émigré physicist and systems theorist, published The Tao of Physics , an effort to find parallels between scientific principles and the insights of . . . . Continue Reading »

The Cosmic Self: A Penetrating Look at Today’s New Age Movements by Ted Peters HarperCollins, 221 pages, $14.95 Ted Peters is a professor at Pacific Lutheran Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley who seems to have made a career out of sponsoring, if not exactly endorsing, . . . . Continue Reading »