John Billings reflects on faith, trust and trans lives. He draws on Jewish and Christian traditions, criticises UK institutions and media treatment of trans people, and calls for compassion over panic.
Examines Saint Brigid as pagan goddess, saint and feminist symbol, and how Ireland’s 2022 bank holiday grew from campaigns on mother and baby homes and the Catholic Church’s treatment of women.
Alison Webster reflects on reconciling Don Cupitt’s non-realism with feminist and liberation theology, finding it too individualist, then drawing on queer theory, situated knowledge and post-human ideas.
Edward Nickell reviews Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower than the Angels, a history of sex and Christianity, concluding that there is no single traditional Christian view of sex or marriage.
Edward Nickell reviews Victoria Johnson’s On Voice, on voices in Christian worship, women’s voices, song and silence, and compares it with his own experience of the Church of England and hymns.
Reviews Adrian Thatcher’s Vile Bodies, which examines how Christian teaching has vilified bodies and sex, from Leviticus and Paul to modern anatomy, and offers a post-abusive theology.
Review of Ally Kateusz’s Mary and Early Christian Women, which uses mosaics, murals and manuscripts to show women’s liturgical leadership in the first centuries, later edited out by male church authorities.
Review of Sheila Upjohn’s In Search of Julian of Norwich, a short account of the medieval anchorite and her Revelations of Divine Love. It covers Julian’s life, theology of love, and the silence of contemplative groups.
Review of Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s The Poison Glen, poems on Irish mother and baby homes and the myth of Balor’s daughter Eithne. The reviewer praises its inside view of secrecy, shame and love.
Review of Charlie Bell’s Queer Holiness, on the Church of England’s debate over sexuality. The reviewer notes its case that reason and experience belong alongside scripture, and hopes the Church might rethink other doctrines.