English Professor Publishes Interdisciplinary Book on Lady Church

When did you first come across the figure of Lady Church? What made you interested in researching this topic further?

As an undergraduate at Pepperdine University, I heard an argument against women's ordination that stuck with me. Someone claimed that priests must be male because they represent husbands of the church, who is female. I was surprised that someone felt so strongly that the church had a gender. Years later, as I prepared for my qualifying exam in medieval Christianity in graduate school, I discovered many representations of the church as female. In these medieval examples, though, male priests describe themselves as part of Lady Church's maternal body. Some female writers also describe visions of Lady Church chastising male clergymen for their corruption. I wanted to learn more about how and why these earlier writers envisioned the church as female.

How long did it take you to write your book, and where all did you have to travel to collect your research? How easy or difficult was it to find information on the figure of Lady Church?

It depends how you count! I wrote my dissertation in three years, then took a seven-year break to work outside of academia, and finally developed the dissertation into a book in about nine more years. That includes the COVID pandemic and lots of waiting time built into the publication process. But another reason it took so long is that it wasn't at all difficult to find examples of Lady Church. I had way more evidence than I knew what to do with! I thought the book would only be about medieval sources, but it turns out that early modern Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, wrote about Lady Church as well. These sources are abundant, but they're also challenging. I made several trips to England to work with biblical commentaries that survive only in manuscripts. About half of my sources are in fairly difficult Latin and haven't been discussed much by other scholars, which also adds to the challenge. 

Lady Church in the Christian Imagination draws upon both religious studies and literary scholarship. Why did you decide to take an interdisciplinary approach to writing your book?

I noticed that literary scholars sometimes overestimated how novel or exceptional some famous examples of Lady Church actually were. I wanted to include more overtly religious genres, like biblical commentaries and theological treatises, to form a well-rounded view of Lady Church. At the same time, I noticed that historians of religion used these sources to identify important ideas about the church, but they overlooked the feminine imagery that medieval and early modern writers used to make their ideas clear and convincing. I wanted to show how pervasive Lady Church imagery was in discussions and debates about the church.

The book's summary says that it "recovers a feminine figure whose historical prominence has been overlooked." If you can state briefly, why did the significance of the Lady Church figure ultimately fade in English religious and literary cultures after the early modern era? 

My theory is that as many forms of Christianity divided into factions and competed with one another, each faction tried to present itself as more "manly" than the others. Before that, Christian priests imagined themselves like mothers giving birth to and breastfeeding their parishioners. Christian men and women imagined their souls like intimate partners of Christ. That imagery is less common today. 

Your book examines "neglected biblical commentaries, Latin and Middle English prose treatises, Neo-Latin drama, and medieval and early modern English poetry." What was one of your favorite poems about Lady Church to research and discuss? Why?

John Donne wrote a sonnet about Lady Church that is famously scandalous. Lady Church is usually known as the faithful spouse of Christ. Yet, Donne's poem claims that she is "most true and pleasing" to Christ her husband when she accepts a lot of additional lovers  — when she is "embrac'd and open to most men." It's not clear what the poem means by "open." Lenient toward sinners? Less exclusive with salvation? While describing Lady Church as promiscuous might seem scandalous to us, I argue in the book that many earlier writers depicted Lady Church in this way.

The cover of Lady Church in the Christian Imagination shows an illustration of Lady Church from the late 14th century. Why did you choose this particular image for your book's cover? Were there many other artistic depictions at the time? Have you come across more recent imagery, either in scholarly texts or in popular culture, that recalls this figure?

I was so glad that Cambridge University Press let me choose the book's cover art. The image of Lady Church comes from a treatise refuting twelve "errors and heresies" of a group known as the Lollards. The Lollards thought that the church in Rome was like a stepmother whom the church in England could ignore. The author of this treatise argued that the church in Rome was actually a faithful and nurturing mother whom English Christians should respect. There are other paintings, mosaics, and sculptures of Lady Church from this time period, but many of them are paired with a depiction of the Synagogue as a female figure using anti-Jewish iconography (like having the Synagogue blindfolded). But, a contemporary statue of Lady Church and the Synagogue was commissioned in 2015 by Saint Joseph's University. Both Lady Church and the Synagogue sit side by side wearing crowns.

Finally, who do you feel is/are the target audience(s) of your book — religious scholars? literary scholars? both?

One target audience is anyone who studies literature, history, or religious culture in medieval or early modern England. My book integrates both literary and more prosaic sources, and I think that scholars in all of these fields can benefit from understanding a wider range of sources. My other target audience is anyone who studies gender and religion more broadly. There has been a lot of research in the past several years on goddesses and other feminine divine figures in world religious traditions. People sometimes assume that there are no prominent feminine figures in Western Christian tradition, except perhaps for the Virgin Mary. I want my book to highlight Lady Church as a prominent and pervasive feminine figure.

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