Agency, Culture and Human Personhood uses feminist theories, process and liberation theologies, psychodynamics and the problem of intimate partner violence to develop a pastoral theology of human agency. The turn to cultural context for understanding what makes human beings who they are and do the things they do, raises significant questions about human agency. To what extent is agency, the human capacity to act, self-determined, and to what extent is it determined by external factors? If we conceive of persons with too little agency we negate the possibility for change but too much agency negates the necessity for resistance movements. Hoeft argues that agency arises ambiguously from and is constituted of culture. She suggests that such a conception of agency enables the church to foster in victims, perpetrators, and congregations more resistance to violence and proposes practices of ministry that can do just that. The book will challenge deeply ingrained notions of personal responsibility and one's capacity to choose change, yet offers concrete proposals for a creating a less violent world.

In this comprehensive, practical, and gripping assessment of various forms of violence against women, Pamela Cooper-White challenges the Christian churches to examine their own responses to the cry of Tamar in our time. She describes specific forms of such violence and outlines appropriate pastoral responses. The second edition of this groundbreaking work is thoroughly updated and examines not only where the church has made progress since 1995 but also where women remain at unchanged or even greater risk of violence.

Gender, Violence, and Justice is a volume of collected essays by an expert in the field of violence against women and pastoral theology. It represents over three decades of research, advocacy, and pastoral theological reflection on the subject of sexual and domestic violence. Topics include intimate partner violence, sexual abuse and trauma, and clergy sexual misconduct; controversial theological issues such as forgiveness; and, as well, positive frameworks for fostering well-being in families, church, and society. Framed by a foreword and an introduction that place this work in the context of new and contemporary challenges in theory and practice, these essays show an evolution of issues and frameworks for theology, care, and activism arising over time from the movement to end violence against women (both within and beyond religious communities)—while at the same time demonstrating an unchanging core commitment to gender justice.

This book is an exercise in political theology, exploring the problem of gender- based violence by focusing on violent male subjects and the issue of entitlement. It addresses gender-based violence in familial and military settings before engaging with a wider political context. The chapters draw on sources ranging from Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Étienne Balibar to Rowan Williams and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Entitlement is theorized and interpreted as a gender pattern, predisposing subjects towards controlling behaviour and/or violent actions. Steven Ogden develops a theology of transformation, stressing immanence. He examines entitled subjects, predisposed to violence, where transformation requires a limit-experience that wrenches the subject from itself. The book then reflects on today’s pervasive strongman politics, where political rationalities foster proprietorial thinking and entitlement gender patterns, and how theology is called to develop counter-discourses and counter-practices.

Creating Women's Theology engages women's questions: - Can women from different religious traditions engage one theological approach? - Can one philosophical approach support feminist religious thought? - What kind of belief follows women's criticism of traditional Christianity? Creating Women's Theology offers a portrait of how some women have found room for faith and feminism. For the last twenty-five years, women religion scholars have synthesized process philosophy with their feminist sensibilities and faith commitments to highlight the value of experience, the importance of freedom, and the interdependence of humanity, God, and all creation. Cutting across cultural and religious traditions, process relational feminist thought represents a theology that women have created. This volume offers an introduction to process and feminist theologies before presenting selections from canonical works in the field with study questions. This volume includes voices from Christianity, Judaism, goddess religion, the Black church, and indigenous religions. Creating Women's Theology invites new generations of undergraduate, seminary, and university graduate students to the methods and insights of process relational feminist theology.

Caregiving practices in churches often center around listening and giving counsel, making referrals, and creating support groups for specific needs. In Caring Liturgies, Susan Marie Smith proposes that Christian ritual is both a method and a means for helping people through liminal times of transition and uncertainty, even vulnerability and fear. This volume teaches readers to recognize the ritual needs of fellow Christians and thus create post-baptismal rites of passage and healing that might strengthen and support them in the fulfillment of their ministries. The book extends the usefulness of denominational "occasional services" books and other resources by suggesting ways to build a rite around a central symbolic action, pointing out issues of ritual honesty and ethics, and identifying skills and attributes necessary to preparing and leading a rite. Numerous narrative examples help to flesh out the principles and illustrate the key argument: that rituals are necessary means to enable human growth and maturity, both through times of suffering and times of transition, and that ritual-making leaders are central to the ongoing health of the church.

In almost every congregation, there is a searching youth who is somehow different from the rest, one who thinks more deeply, asks more questions, and wants to make a difference in the world. This young person may be seen as a loner, an upstart, or someone who does not fi t. Youth workers may not know what to do with these inquisitive youth, and a youth program that meets the congregation’s expectations probably won’t connect with the needs and interests of searching youth. Eventually, searching youth turn into searching adults who continue to “stir things up” and enrich the life of our congregations with their questions, insights, witness, and service. These young people have the capacity and ability to provide signifi cant leadership in our congregations now and in the future. Because of their unique gifts, we are offering this book as a resource for pastors, teachers, and youth leaders who work with them. In this book, faculty members, students, and recent graduates of Saint Paul School of Theology look through the eyes of their academic disciplines and ministry experience to explore the foundations for ministry with searching youth and to offer designs for your ministry.

The handbook offers interreligious and multicultural perspectives on women’s studies in religion in conversation with specific contextualized gender-biased justice challenges. Contributing authors address 25 current and trending themes from their diverse socio-cultural-religious backgrounds. Themes move across the spectrum of women’s studies in religion, blurring the boundaries beyond “religious studies” to include perspectives from ethics, philosophy, sociology, economics, and law as. Religious diversity addresses challenges for women’s studies through the lens of Wicca, Buddhist, Asian Trans Pacific, Hinduism, Judaism, Muslima, and Christian. The handbook is practical, contemporary, and relevant as it moves theory to practical application in the section on challenging and changing system gender injustice with chapters on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement, femicide and feminicide, a Mohawk response to colonial dominion and violations to Indigenous lands and women, and a religio-politico witness for love and justice, include how to engage the theories of women’s studies in religion in the public square through civic engagement to create empowerment for actual, practical change. It shows the future movement of the becoming of women’s studies with chapters digital activism, reimagining women’s mosque spaces online, minoritized sexual identities, and spiritual homelessness, and charges readers to see “hope now” by challenging and changing gender injustice.

The connections between religion and violence are complex and multifaceted. From the conflicts in Middle East and the Balkans to those in Southeast Asia and beyond, religion frames and legitimates political violence. Moreover, in international relations since 9/11, religious language and metaphors have acquired a new significance. In this context the emerging consensus appears to be not only that violence is intrinsic to religion, but also that religions incite, legitimate, and intensify political violence. However, such an unambiguous indictment of religions is incomplete in that it fails both to appreciate significant counter examples and to recognize the diversity that exists within religions on the issue of violence, particularly the religious roots of pacifism and the ethics of non-violence. This collection explores aspects of this ambivalence between religion and violence. It focuses on traditions of legitimation and pacifism within the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and concludes with an examination of this ambivalence as it unfolds in each tradition's engagement with the politics of gender.

C. S. Lewis was concerned about an aspect of the problem of evil he called subjectivism: the tendency of one's perspective to move towards self-referentialism and utilitarianism. In C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, Jerry Root provides a holistic reading of Lewis by walking the reader through all of Lewis's published work as he argues Lewis's case against subjectivism. Furthermore, the book reveals that Lewis consistently employed fiction to make his case, as virtually all of his villains are portrayed as subjectivists. Lewis's warnings are prophetic; this book is not merely an exposition of Lewis, it is also a timely investigation into the problem of evil.