ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses key issues at the intersection of motherhood, mothering, and maternity with religion and spirituality. It addresses methodological difficulties for studying religions and mothers, such as accessing sources featuring authentic maternal voices in past historical contexts. Building on interdisciplinary scholarship, mostly in the academic study of religions, this chapter outlines the following themes: divine motherhood and mother goddesses, maternal cosmological narratives, maternal figures of the divine and other maternal metaphors in religion and spirituality, religious othermothering, spiritual mothering and mothering in various religious and cultural contexts, mother blame and religion, spiritual leaders as mothers, religious feminist movements centered on or led by mothers, religion as a way to eschew motherhood, traditional and emerging ritualizations centered on motherhood, and the influence of religion on maternal health and well-being. Examples from past and contemporary contexts, cross-culturally, highlight some of the recurring attitudes of religions towards different categories of mothers. The chapter also addresses how mothers use a variety of spiritual and ritual resources to resist or reshape religious normative injunctions, presented as divinely ordered or as legitimized by sacred texts. Finally, contemporary challenges and new directions for future research are also considered.
