Theology of The Womb

What a remarkable book. A beautiful exercise in narrative theology, weaving moving memoir with substantive theological reflection about how the landscape of women's bodies and motherhood nights reflect and point us to the divine.

I admit, though. I myself have both a strong post-enlightenment rigid intellectual side and an equally strong creative, intuitive, artistic side reading within me. Well there were moments of robust academic theology woven throughout this book, much of the book peels more towards one's poetic, artistic, and more flexible impulses. I've described this book to friends as being more than a little “woo woo” at parts; meaning, there are times when a very flexible approach to certain texts is taken to interpret scripture, or things are said that are more often associated with the hippie, crunchy all natural vibes you find along your “weird” friends in Instagram. You know the type.

I have seen this tension in other Goodreads reviews of this book. A lot of people criticize it for being advertised as “theology” but (in their view), it is “just” a memoir. With all due respect, this is incorrect. Each chapter begins with a memoir-ish entry into a topic, but then real theology is done around that topic. If you can allow yourself to be more flexible with scripture, interpretation, and a more intuitive and larger view of theology, then this book will move you and teach you profoundly.

If you hear me write that sentence, and your brain immediately starts wanting to plant flags in the ground about strict narrow techniques of hermeneutics and interpretation, then you will have a hard time with this book. And that's okay. The world needs people of that wiring as well.

Lastly, as one source of critique, I've got to say: this book REALLY needed a more aggressive editing process. Individual lines, stories, and conclusions are repeated at different times in the book, as if Bauman had forgotten she had already mentioned these things. People who she's been quoting throughout the book suddenly get a fuller introduction to who they are halfway through, as if they are being introduced for the first time. It felt like the original draft of this book had the chapters in a different order, maybe. The pacing and the flow of the book can be inconsistent, and the clarity with which she makes her point could have been tighter. This is only a little distracting, and does not take away from the overall force in beauty of the book, though.

However, I will say that the audiobook version has a wonderful narrator and listening to it as opposed to reading it might more effectively smooth out some of the rough edges of the pros.