Divine Mother, Blessed Mother Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary

The Virgin Mary has long been the object of both devotional and scholarly interest, and recent years have seen a proliferation of studies on Hindu goddess-worship traditions. Despite the parallels between the two, however, no one has yet undertaken a book-length comparison of these traditions.In Divine Mother, Blessed Mother, Francis Clooney offers the first extended comparative study of Hindu goddesses and the Virgin Mary. Clooney is almost unique in the field of Hindu studies as a Christian theologian with the linguistic and philosophical expertise necessary to produce sophisticatedcomparative analyses. Building on his previous work in comparative theology, he sheds new light not only on these individual traditions but also on the nature of gender and the divine.

Francis X. Clooney, S.J. is a Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He is Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston College, where he has taught since 1984, and was the first president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. He is the author of many books, most recently Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries between Religions (OUP, 2001).