Florence Pasche Guignard

Sacred Pregnancy

World Religions

“Ann Duncan's work meets a long-standing need in religious studies: to address the intersection of religion not just with gender or women but precisely with motherhood. This exploration of various American spiritual birth movements and the 'religious nones' focuses on pregnancy and birth as central elements of motherhood, after an insightful contextualization of motherhood and feminism, with a focus on the American context. Sacred Pregnancy will undoubtedly shape many debates around the spiritual and ritual aspects of pregnancy and birth, bodily autonomy, agency and choice, and the status of mothers in medical, cultural, and religious discourses. This book also makes an important contribution to the academic discipline of religious studies by confronting paradigms of spirituality and religion, as well as definitions of religious experience and community through the lenses of maternal theory. Readers in religious studies, gender studies, and other disciplinary fields are invited to think beyond the boundaries that might constrain our access to and concepts of spiritual and religious experience. Ann Duncan's groundbreaking book also makes a strong case for intersectional approaches to recognize motherhood as one of the many identities that shape humans, in addition to race, class, and others.”