Religious Intimacies: Intersubjectivity in the Modern Christian West

by Mary Dunn (Editor), Brenna Moore (Editor)

Overview

An essay collection that demonstrates how emotional ties and intimate affiliations remain critical to the dimensions of modern Christianity.

Scholars of religion have come a long way since William James famously made of religion a matter between man and his maker. For decades now, they have been attentive to the ways in which religion takes shape as the product of broad social forces, focusing on the dynamics of power and culture as heuristics for understanding religious phenomena and experience.

What, however, might they be missing by moving too quickly from one interpretative extreme to the other—and what might we learn about religion by staying in the interstitial space between the individual in her solitude and society as a whole?

Religious Intimacies, edited by Mary Dunn and Brenna Moore, brings together nine scholars of modern Christianity to probe this in-between space. In essays that range from treatments of Jesuit-indigenous relations in early modern Canada to the erotics of contemporary black theology, each contributor makes the case for the study of the presence and power of affective ties and relational dynamics between friends, lovers, and intimate others (even things) as vital to the understanding of religion.

“These thoughtful and probing essays convincingly show that ties built upon affect, family, and shared convictions have continued to inform lived religious experience in modern times and shape western Christianity in significant, sometimes surprising ways.” —Jodi Bilinkoff, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

“A rich collection of essays that use intimate relationships to chart a course between ‘solitude and society.’” —Tamsin Jones, Trinity College

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253052544
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	237
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mary Dunn is Associate Professor of Early Modern Christianity in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. She is author of The Cruelest of All Mothers: Marie de l'Incarnation, Motherhood, and Christian Tradition.

Brenna Moore is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at Fordham University. She is author of Sacred Dread: Raïssa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival, 1905–1944.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Recovering Relationships as a Path through the Modern Christian West / Mary Dunn and Brenna Moore

1. Body, Subjectivity, and Society in Religious Studies / Constance M. Furey

2. "Thine Own by Adoption": Conversion, Integration, and Fictive Kinship in the Life of Thérèse Oionhaton, Seventeenth-Century Wendat Convert / Emma Anderson

3. Making Miracles Efficacious: Katherine Tekakwitha, Miraculous Cures, and Relational Networks in Seventeenth-Century New France / Mary Dunn

4. Søren Kierkegaard and Religious Sensibility: Communion in Intimate Life / Edward F. Mooney

5. Henry Adams, Clover Adams, and the Death of the Real / Amy Hollywood

6. Objects of Devotion: Intimacy and Material Relations in Mexican Catholicism / Jennifer Scheper Hughes

7. The Rhetoric of Solitude and the Practice of Friendship: Reading Catholic Intellectual History in the Study of Religion / Brenna Moore

8. A Vocation of Contested Intimacies: U.S. Roman Catholic Priesthood in the Mid-Twentieth Century / John Seitz

9. Embracing Nimrod's Legacy: The Erotic, the Irreverence of Fantasy, and the Redemption of Black Theology / Anthony Pinn

What People are Saying About This

"Scholars of Christianity have long acknowledged spiritual friendship as a powerful concept and model for human relationships from its origins through the seventeenth century. These thoughtful and probing essays convincingly show that ties built upon affect, family, and shared convictions have continued to inform lived religious experience in modern times and shape western Christianity in significant, sometimes surprising ways."

Jodi Bilinkoff

Scholars of Christianity have long acknowledged spiritual friendship as a powerful concept and model for human relationships from its origins through the seventeenth century. These thoughtful and probing essays convincingly show that ties built upon affect, family, and shared convictions have continued to inform lived religious experience in modern times and shape western Christianity in significant, sometimes surprising ways.

Tamsin Jones

Dunn and Moore have brought together a rich collection of essays which use intimate relationships to chart a course between "solitude and society" providing an original lens through which to examine religion in the modern Christian West. By broadening the narrow view of intimacy beyond the privacy of heteronormative marriage, this book demonstrates the ongoing political, public, and theological significance of friendship and embodied, affective relationship in the modern age.

Editorial Reviews

"Scholars of Christianity have long acknowledged spiritual friendship as a powerful concept and model for human relationships from its origins through the seventeenth century. These thoughtful and probing essays convincingly show that ties built upon affect, family, and shared convictions have continued to inform lived religious experience in modern times and shape western Christianity in significant, sometimes surprising ways."—Jodi Bilinkoff, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

"Dunn and Moore have brought together a rich collection of essays which use intimate relationships to chart a course between "solitude and society" providing an original lens through which to examine religion in the modern Christian West. By broadening the narrow view of intimacy beyond the privacy of heteronormative marriage, this book demonstrates the ongoing political, public, and theological significance of friendship and embodied, affective relationship in the modern age."—Tamsin Jones, Trinity College

From the Publisher