Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power

by Rita Nakashima Brock

Winner of the 1988 Crossroad Women’s Studies Award

An emotionally provacative book, Journeys by Heart places the ‘theology of the abused child’ at the center of feminist theory. A revisioning of Christianity, it stretches traditional concepts and sheds new light on the fact that through our acts of love and lovelessness we create one another.

— The Award Advisory Commitee

Brock’s Asian and American experiences seem to have given her some remarkable insights. . . . the epilogue ‘Journeying by Heart’ is a veritable Fodor’s of feminism and femininity.
— Publishers Weekly

Brock, as a Christian theologian, is both insightful and inciting. . . . What I find most powerful in this book’s approach to the gospel is its emphasis on the need to break out of death-dealing, hierarchical patterns of life in our families and communities.
— Daughters of Sarah

Brock’s vision is compelling, original, and tantalizing. Her thesis is bold, and right as rain. Furthermore, it is indeed ’emotionally provocative’. . . . Brock has given us an important and exciting work in this volume. We can hope to hear more from this intriguing and tantalizing young theologian.
— St. Luke’s Journal of Theology

A fresh perspective on the standard problems in feminist theology. . . . This book will have broad appeal. Brock presents her ideas in an accessible way, and her theology of child abuse should interest anyone–lay person, cleric, or academic–who wants to know more about relationship of religion to feminism.
— Theology Today

Rita Nakashima Brockis Associate Professor in the Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Hamline University, former director of the Women’s Studies Program at Stephens College, and serves on the boards of several feminist, religious, and peace organizations, including the Center for the Preventions of Sexual and Domestic Violence and the editorial board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.