Many people see the gospel story of Martha and Mary as presenting a choice between the spiritual and the material. This places an impossible burden on anyone, but particularly women. How do you achieve personal piety, understood as something separate from practical involvement, when much of life consists of attention to material necessities? Using resources from feminist thought, women’s experience, Christian tradition and feminist theology, Fran Porter highlights women’s problematic status within the church today, and provides resources for a Christian vision that affirms women.