Domestic abuse is a common occurrence for women in the Christian Church. Underlying this dark reality is a long history of patriarchal theological interpretations that have depicted God as a dominant male figure that subjects women to male hierarchy as a subordinate. Often based on an understanding of Jesus as subordinate to God the Father in the Trinity, the correlated praxis of the Church has commonly been to subject women to suffering at the hands of men – even at the (...) cost of their lives – thus mimicking the death of Christ. This deeply flawed androcentric theology and subsequent praxis of women’s subordination has been severely challenged by liberal feminists, and rightly so for the sake of women’s survival and flourishing. This article utilizes the Social Trinity to provide a Christian feminist critique of patriarchal atonement models and theology towards the feminist goal of liberating women from male-perpetrated violence. Ultimately a reframing of God will be presented that includes women as full persons and calls them to resist the suffering of domestic abuse and to reclaim their full personhood as the imago Dei. (shrink)

This article pursues a Whiteheadian association of meals and cooking with an orienting concern for ecological well-being and planetary health. Process thought helps those who eat to recognize the real influences that our meals have upon the emerging world.

R. Marie Griffith and Sarah Coakley suggest that feminist ecumenism across the evangelical-liberal spectrum is valuable for feminist studies of religion and theologies. In this context, I trace the conversation that has arisen around the idea of adopting ‘submission’ vis-à-vis the Christian notion of kenosis, and turn it in a new direction. I argue that Coakley’s apophatically cruciform understanding of submission in contemplative prayer contrasts with womanist approaches like that of Delores Williams. Drawing on Williams’ considerations of atonement and Friedrich (...) Schleiermacher’s understanding of prayer, I offer ‘incarnational submission’ as a way to acknowledge the value of prayerful submission while avoiding its potentially oppressive features. (shrink)

The broad fields of ethical reflection on racialization, racial justice, black liberation theology, and queer theology of color must come to terms with the year 2016, which can be framed on one side with the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other side with a presidential election cycle in which racism and racial justice played particularly salient roles. Against this backdrop, this book discussion looks at recent literature on racial justice asking three questions. How does historical consciousness shape contemporary (...) ethical thought on racial justice? In what ways do the intersectionalities of gender and sexuality, immigration and transnationality, class, and contemporary culture present particular challenges and new possibilities? And how do the ethical frameworks of religious traditions contribute to the development of public theology for racial justice? The conclusion considers how religious ethics concerned with racial justice does harm or contributes to religiously grounded responses to racial injustice. Reflection on these questions points to the need for ongoing engagement with the black experience—broadly construed and within the context of multiple intersections—in the United States and globally in ethical analysis. However, this in turn makes particular and critical demands on how it is that we are to both teach and read religious ethics and political theology at our institutions, as well as in the churches. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 3, pp 205 - 234 For many people across the world, experiences of depression include features that extend beyond the biopsychiatric model, which predominates in research on the relationship between religious and spiritual coping and depressive symptoms. How does attending to these diverse experiences of depression challenge our understanding of the dynamic between religiosity and depression? This paper presents thirteen qualitative interviews among economically marginalized mothers in the metro-Boston area. Analyzing these narratives presents a complex (...) picture of the way chronic situational stress lies beneath their experiences of depression. From this expanded view of depressive experiences, we analyze the religious coping strategies of social support and meaning making to reveal the holistic, yet often ambiguous, ways these mothers engaged religious and spiritual resources to forge hope amidst chronic stress. (shrink)

For many years feminist theologians have found much in common with process theology. As a consequence a robust tradition has developed that links feminist theology with many aspects of process theology. An important element of this tradition is the attempt to draw similarities between postmodernism and feminist process theology. In this article I argue, first, that the connection between feminist process theology and postmodernism is philosophically problematic and, second, that another contemporary feminist approach, the new materialism, provides the basis for (...) a more fruitful dialogue between feminist theology and process theology. My goal is to extend this dialogue. (shrink)

In this article, I contend that a concept of hope in terms of process theology can better deal with Miguel De La Torre's criticisms of theology of hope than Jurgen Moltmann's rightly famous treatment of this topic.