From the belief there has been a unique revelation in history it follows that Christians must constantly refer back to that past age. The values and outlook of that patriarchal age, in its constant reiteration, come to form the religious subconscious, affecting present-day relations between men and women. Hampson further finds problematic the idea of a transcendent God; again the corollary of a belief in particular revelation. The relationship to such scripture, or to such a God, must necessarily be heteronomous. At a later date feminist appropriation of G. W. F. Hegel came to be crucial for Hampson's critique of Christianity. Prompted by Luce Irigaray's building on the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach, Hampson came to hold that religious thought-structures are a masculinist projection, both reflecting and serving to legitimise male superordination; and thus a form of fascism. Hampson would have theology become like any other discipline; drawing on the past when that remains appropriate, taking novel directions when the progress of human knowledge or ethics demands this. The more challenging aspect of Hampson's thought has been to consider (if the Christian myth is to be dismissed), how then 'God' had best be conceptualised. Hampson has always been forthright as to her belief that prayer, or focused thought for another, is effective. It is the conviction that there is such a dimension to reality, Hampson has said, that led her to abandon secular history for theology. 'God', for her, is the name that humans have given to their awareness (anthropomorphising it) of this reality. Hampson holds that God had best be understood as spirit, intimately interconnected with what we are. Drawing on the thought of Schleiermacher and feminist writing, she suggests that a 'porous' and relational understanding of the self may allow us to envisage how humans and 'that which is God' are inter-related. (Whether 'God' has agency, or would exist if humans did not, remain for her open questions.) It is this theological realism which those of more traditional beliefs have often recognised as being held in common. For her part Hampson always insists that the definition of what it is to be Christian necessarily involves an epistemological claim; what is no more than an ethical outlook cannot on its own constitute Christianity. Academically, Hampson has always been impressed by the power of Lutheran thought, little known or appreciated in the British context. She has found herself over many years