1st Edition
Contemporary Feminist Theologies Power, Authority, Love
This book explores the issues of power, authority and love with current concerns in the Christian theological exploration of feminism and feminist theology.
It addresses its key themes in three parts: (1) power deals with feminist critiques, (2) authority unpacks feminist methodologies, and (3) love explores feminist ethics. Covering issues such as embodiment, intersectionality, liberation theologies, historiography, queer approaches to hermeneutics, philosophy and more, it provides a multi-layered and nuanced appreciation of this important area of theological thought and practice.
This volume will be vital reading for scholars of feminist theology, queer theology, process theology, practical theology, religion and gender.
Introduction: To Speak, To Say Anything At All
Rebekah Pryor, Cathryn McKinney and Kerrie Handasyde
Part I Power: Dis/locations and Reclamations
1 Speaking Up! Speaking Out! Naming the Silences: Women, Power, Authority and Love in the Pacific
Seforosa Carroll
2 Witnessing to What Remains, or The Power of Persisting: Power, Authority, and Love in the Interim Spaces
Nicola Slee
3 From Footballs to Matildas? Gender Diverse People and Theological Game Change
Josephine Inkpin
4 Reading and Process: Rethinking Power
Brian Macallan
5 The Problem with Powerlessness: Attending to Power and Authority in Matthew’s Wisdom Christology
Sally Douglas
Part II Authority: Subversions and Contestations
6 "How could it be otherwise?" Sacramental Imagination and Political Rites
Katharine Massam
7 Mother, Preacher, Press: Women Ministers and the Negotiation of Authority, 1910–1933
Kerrie Handasyde
8 Reforming Women in England and Scotland: Claiming Authority to Speak of God
Ann Loades
9 Against and Without Authority: Writing Feminist Theology After the End of History
Janice McRandal
Part III Love: Embodiment and Practice
10 Roadsides: Toward an Ecological Feminist Theology of Cross-Species Compassion
Anne Elvey
11 Covenantal Relationships and Queer Bodies
Anika Jensen and Katecia Taylor with Stephen Burns
12 Re-visioning (the) Love/Command: Law, Authority, and the Logic of Love in the Philosophy of Pamela Sue Anderson and Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
Sean Winter
13 Writing the Image to Forgiveness and Love
Helena Kadmos
14 Thinking, Dancing: Exploring the Gaps Between Ecstasy and Distress
Rebekah Pryor
15 Speaking of Being Heard: Voice and Purpose in Prison
Cathryn McKinney
Biography
Kerrie Handasyde is Senior Lecturer in Church History at Pilgrim Theological College and Adjunct Lecturer at Stirling Theological College, University of Divinity.
Cathryn McKinney is Professional Supervision Program Coordinator at the University of Divinity, and an Honorary Postdoctoral Associate and Associate Lecturer at Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity, and chaplain at a women’s prison.
Rebekah Pryor is an artist, curator and early career researcher at the University of Melbourne.
This deeply interconnected, collection of essays offers fresh perspectives on the challenges of comprehending the relations between power and agency, authority and love. Feminist theology has always rejected binary separations between these spheres and stresses the painful but necessary task of accommodating their entanglement in human and divine relations. What the authors in this work achieve are vivid, culturally located and accountable representations of loving as ‘power transformed’ and ‘transforming power’.
Heather Walton, Professor of Theology and Creative Practice, University of Glasgow
