Since the turn of the century and especially in the last decade, women's diverse experiences of mothering have come to be recognized as sites of spiritual practice and sources of theological reflection in womanist, feminist, and other women-centered theologies. Academic and popular publications on motherhood and Christian faith have proliferated in print and on the internet and, in 2020, the American Academy of Religion even hosted a preconference workshop on “Motherhood and Religion: A Comparative, Interdisciplinary, Matricentric Approach.” Natalie Carnes’ latest monograph offers a uniquely creative, spiritually enriching, and theologically robust contribution to this burgeoning conversation.
Like Augustine's Confessions, on which Carnes patterns her book, Motherhood: A Confession is part memoir, part spiritual writing, and part theological treatise. Carnes wrestles with her appreciation and critique of Augustine throughout the text, as she weaves the Augustinian themes of desire, anxiety, ambition, and conversion into her reflections on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and care as revelatory of truths, however fragmentary, about the human condition in relation to the all-encompassing presence of divine grace in creation. The first nine chapters of the book are addressed in the second person to Carnes’ daughter (really an amalgamation of her three daughters), in relationship with whom she experiences both herself and her child as mediums of God's saving presence in daily life. She also grapples with the shadow side of this relationship and its temptations to unhealthy forms of attachment, self-aggrandizement, idolatry, and domination. In one passage, for example, Carnes interrogates the ambiguity of maternal mercy, which can manifest itself in toxic and death-dealing pathologies when it closes itself off to the well-being of others or the well-being of even the child herself. On the other hand, Carnes muses that maternal mercy can be precisely the catalyst for the expansion of love and care beyond one's own kith and kin to all children and the world more broadly. She similarly refuses to gloss over the complex tension and need for discernment between situations that call a mother to suffer for the sake of love and situations in which saying no to suffering (of oneself or others) is the loving and just course of action. Ultimately, these chapters testify to a spiritual journey in which the ever-present temptation to selfish, grasping love opens up into a capacity for ceding control of the child and standing before God with her in communion and friendship as equal, separate selves.
The final four chapters of the book shift to a second-person address to God, whom Carnes recognizes as embodied in all of creation. Here her musings wrap up the themes of the book in an intricate dance between a robust theology of creation, an appreciation of remembering Mary and the church's saints as icons of God's presence in creation, and a maternal ecclesiology in which Mother-Church unites with Mother God in the labor pains of giving birth to the new creation. While Carnes pauses to lament the “jagged edges” (160) of the church's memory vis-à-vis its betrayal of Christ in the violent persecution of innocents, her ecclesiology lacks the critical edge necessary for interrogating the deeply embedded patriarchy of the Christian church and its persistent complicity in the structures of empire, colonialism, gender violence, and ecological degradation. This critical edge is especially scarce in Carnes’ too easy adoption of Mariology and the trope of “Mother-Church” ecclesiology, both of which have been rightly critiqued by Catholic feminist theologians for romanticism and reinscription of patriarchal gender norms.
Nevertheless, the book as a whole offers a compelling account of motherhood as a journey of spiritual growth and as a viable site of practical wisdom and theological reflection. Standing on its own, or paired with Augustine's Confessions, it would enrich any class on Christian theology, spirituality, or women and religion. More broadly, it would serve as an accessible and engaging source for reflection and dialogue in nonacademic settings, such as adult religious education groups in churches and community book clubs. I myself will be sharing Carnes’ book with several mothers in my own life, whom I know will benefit from her deep wisdom about partnering with God in the joys and pains of loving another creature into the fullness of existence.
