From Publishers Weekly
Ever since Aristotle, Western culture has divorced emotion from reason and body from soul. Thanks to Paul and Augustine, the Christian tradition has associated passion with unbridled and lustful sex and often vilified women as creatures of passion who use the wiles of their bodies to seduce men away from reason. Thus, Christian writers have viewed with suspicion any traces of passion in the religious life. In her spirited, but sometimes pedantic, study, Dreyer, a Fairfield University religious studies professor, ardently restores passion to its central role in the spiritual life. Beginning with the Greeks, she traces the history of the idea of passion in the West, focusing especially on its presence in biblical texts from the Psalms to Song of Songs and the ways in which early Christian writers such as Origen viewed it positively. Dreyer then explores the depths of desire with which two medieval women mystics, Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant, passionately sought God. The writings of these women reveal not only an intense longing for union with Christ, often expressed in erotic and affectionate language, but also a recognition that their quest is both intellectual and emotional. While Dreyer offers little new about Hildegard or Hadewijch, she uses their lives and work to fervently revive passion in the spiritual life. (Mar. 30) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
In a format that is accessible, inspirational, and informed by serious scholarship, Passionate Spirituality explores the roots and meanings of passion in western culture, and examines how passion is expressed in the works of two medieval women mystics--Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant. From that perspective, the author goes on to examine the role of passion in the lives of contemporary Christians seeking to deepen their own spiritual journeys. Elizabeth Dreyer points out that, far too often, the term "passion" is associated either with romance and sexuality or with political fanaticism--thus cutting off the breadth of its meaning for spiritual expression. But the great mystics succeed precisely because they hold together the affective and the intellectual aspects of the spiritual life in creative and convincing ways. Their accounts of their mystical experience are important resources for information and understanding about how to talk about God more formally, and for what it means to be passionately in love with God and the world. Passionate Spirituality looks not only to the past, but to the present and future as well as Dreyer explores whether and how these mystical texts might infuse contemporary spirituality with new life, and theological thinking with greater insight. She shows how the expression of mystical experience brings fresh perspectives that allow the affections to influence our thinking and our spiritual life and has the potential to open the deep structures of one's personality to the fullness of grace, to contribute to the ongoing creation of a new self as image of God, and to lead to the pursuit of compassion and commitment to justice on behalf of a suffering world. PASSIONATE SPIRITUALITY fills an important niche between scholarly works on medieval women, and books of excerpts or simple meditations. It should also appeal to a wide range of lay and clerical ministers and as a study book for adult education classes and discussion groups. It will also serve as a useful text for classes on medieval religious experience, women's history; feminist theology; and Christian mysticism.

About the Author
Elizabeth A. Dreyer, PhD, professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, is a well-known lay theologian, author and lecturer. She is the author of Earth Crammed with Heaven: A Spirituality of Everyday Life and the editor of The Cross in Christian Tradition: From Paul to Bonaventure, both published by Paulist Press.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Passionate Spirituality explores the roots and meanings of passion in Western culture, and then examines how passion is expressed in the works of two medieval women mystics - Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant - and in the lives of contemporary Christians seeking to deepen their own spiritual journeys. Too often, the term "passion' is associated only with steamy films, sexual, sin, and emotional excess - cutting off the breadth of its meaning and expression for positive good. But the great mystics succeed precisely because they hold together both the affective and the intellectual aspects of the spiritual life in creative and convincing ways. Their accounts of their mystical experience are important resources for information and understanding about how to talk about God more formally, and for what it means to be passionately in love with God and the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly