Women''s Bodies as Battlefield : Christian Theology and the Global War on Women

Christian theology has been complicit in justifying the war on women, but it also has resources to help finally declare peace in the war on women. War itself has come to resemble the war on women, and thus strategies to end the war on women, supported by new Christian theological interpretations, will also help end today's endless wars.

Women''s Bodies as Battlefield demonstrates that the ''war on women'' is not a metaphor but rather a global pandemic of violence against women that constitutes an actual war. In this global war on women, female bodies literally serve as places of battle. The reality of women''s bodies as battlefield connects the literal and ideological violence perpetrated against women with the literal and ideological violence of war itself. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite shows that, of the many societal structures that enable both the violence of literal war and violence against women, the three most crucial factors are the desire for power, hierarchical authority structures, and contempt for the body. Not only do war and violence against women have some of the same social, cultural, and religious roots, but these roots are also mutually reinforcing. The book dissects and critiques paradigms designed to limit or prevent war (pacifism, ''just peace,'' and ''just war'') from the perspective of violence against women. It proposes positive, practical changes to these paradigms and invites the reader to join a worldwide movement to end the scourge of war and violence against women.