A Place of Springs

In this book Grace Jantzen constructs a Quaker spirituality of beauty as a theological-philosophical response to a world preoccupied with death and violence. Having mapped the foundations of western cultural violence in the Greco-Roman period and the Judea-Christian tradition in Foundations of Violence and Violence to Eternity, she now offers her alternative vision. This vision is an original and creative feminist reading of the Quaker tradition, considering George Fox and the writings of Quaker women, exploring the themes of inner light and beauty as alternatives to violence and the obstacles to building such an alternative world. After showing how seventeenth-century Quakers offered a different option for modernity, she maps the philosophical and ethical implications of engaging with the world through beauty and its transforming power. Written for everyone interested in contemporary spirtuality, it explains how Quaker ideas can provide a way to transform our violent world into one that celebrates life rather than death, peace rather than violence.
This work is the second of two posthumous publications to complete Grace M. Jantzen’s Death and the Displacement of Beauty collection, which began with Foundations of Violence (Routledge, 2004).

The late Grace M. Jantzen (1948-2006) was Professor of Religion, Culture and Gender at Manchester University and a widely respected feminist philosopher and theologian.
Jeremy Carrette is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent and is the author of Selling Spirituality (Routledge, 2005) and Religion and Critical Psychology (Routledge, 2007).
Morny Joy is University Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. She is author of Divine Love: Luce Irigaray, Women, Gender and Religion (2007).

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1: The Anxieties of Beauty 1. Beauty and the Beast: Ambiguities and Openings 2. Beauty Denied Part 2: Beauty, Quakers and the Inner Light 3. Beauty and Spirituality 4. Quakers and the Inner Light 5. Choose Life! Early Quaker Women 6. Fanny Henshaw and the Question Self-Deception 7. Before the Rooster Crows: The Betrayal of Knowledge in Modernity Part 3: Beauty, Desire and Engaged Spirituality 8. In the Eye of the Beholder 9. Beauty and the Body 10. Beauty, Desire and Need 11. Flourishing: Towards an Ethic of Feminist Theory 12. On Changing the Imaginary Index