Monica a Coleman

Creating Women's Theology: a Movement Engaging Process Thought Monica a Coleman

Brief Description: 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. Table of Contents: Permissions -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword / Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki -- Introduction / Monica A. Coleman, Nancy R. Howell, Helene Tallon Russell -- Part 1. Introduction to the Movement -- 1. Introduction to Feminist Theology / Helene Tallon Russell -- 2. Introduction to Process Theology / Monica A. Coleman -- 3. Women, Whitehead, and Hartshorne: What Characterizes Process-Relational Women's Worldviews / Nancy R. Howell -- Part 2. Texts in Women's Process Relational Theologies -- 4. Experience / Valerie Saiving -- from Androgynous Life: A Feminist Appropriation of Process Thought -- Commentary and Study Questions / Helene Tallon Russell -- 5. Methodology/God's Presence / Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki -- from God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology -- Commentary and Study Questions / Jeanyne B. Slettom -- 6. Rejection of Dualism / Rosemary Radford Ruether -- from Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology and Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing -- Commentary and Study Questions / Kathlyn Breazeale -- 7. Sin / Susan L. Nelson -- from The Sin of Hiding: A Feminist Critique of Reinhold Niebuhr's Account of the Sin of Pride -- Commentary and Study Questions / Nichole Torbizsky -- 8. Self and God: Separation, Sexism, and Self / Catherine E. Keller -- from From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self -- Commentary and Study Questions / Krista E. Hughes -- 9. Christology and Eros / Rita Nakashima Brock -- from Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power -- Commentary and Study Questions / Marit A. Trelstad -- 10. Ecofeminism and Nature / Sallie McFague -- from The Body of God: An Ecological Theology -- Commentary and Study Questions / Kirsten Mebust -- 11. Holy Spirit and Womanism / Karen Baker-Fletcher -- from Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective -- Commentary and Study Questions / Monica A. Coleman -- 12. Theological Anthropology / Nancy R. Howell -- from The Importance of Being Chimpanzee -- Commentary and Study Questions / Ann M. Pederson -- 13. Creativity, Christology and Science: A Process of Composition and Improvisation / Ann M. Pederson -- from God, Creation, and All That Jazz: A Process of Composition and Improvisation -- Commentary and Study Questions / Caryn D. Riswold -- 14. Jewish Feminism: Holocaust Jewish Theology, Feminism, and Process Philosophy / Sandra B. Lubarsky -- from Reconstructing Divine Power: Holocaust Jewish Theology, Feminism, and Process Philosophy -- Commentary and Study Questions / Arlette Poland -- 15. Re-Imaging Goddess/God: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World / Carol P. Christ -- from She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World -- Commentary and Study Questions / Constance Wise -- 16. African Traditional Religions and Womanism / Monica A. Coleman -- from Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology -- Commentary and Study Questions / Carolyn Roncolato -- Contributors -- Chapter Sources -- Bibliography -- Index. Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: Synopsis: 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. Endorsements: "Fifty years ago Valerie Saivings noted the congeniality between the process critique of the philosophical and theological tradition and the insights of Christian women. This remarkable volume shows how the work of women process theologians and of feminists and womanists who found process categories useful together constitute a single richly textured movement. From the perspective of this male process theologian, this movement is today the most promising expression of process theology. Indeed, I view it as embodying the cutting edge of Christian theology as a whole." --John B. Cobb Jr. Claremont Graduate School and Claremont School of Theology "Creating Women's Theology is an important contribution to the literature. It offers a good summary of the relation to feminism and process theology. It also delves into some basic questions about the universality of feminist approaches to theology in different religious traditions. This book will be a helpful introduction for courses in feminist theology." --Rosemary Radford Ruether Claremont Graduate University "In its relational structure and transtemporal movement, this book works like a society of occasions in process should! It is a beautifully aimed series of reflective events, displaying the transgenerational trajectories of the feminist and womanist process theologies as they have been massively but often indirectly unfolding. By making this movement within a movement so becomingly readable and so dialogically explicit, by highlighting its intersections with other movements and its internal differences, it will lure yet another generation of thinkers into a vital conversation." --Catherine Keller Drew University Theological School Editor Biography: Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. She is the author of The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (2004) and Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (2008). Nancy R. Howell is Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. She is author of A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics (2000). Helene Tallon Russell is Associate Professor of Theology at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is author of Irigaray and Kierkegaard: On the Construction of the Self (2009)."

Contributor Bio:  Coleman, Monica A Monica A. Coleman is associate professor of constructive theology and African American religions at Claremont School of Theology. She is the author ofNot Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression(2012), The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (2010), Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology(Fortress Press, 2008), andco-editor of Creating Women's Theology: a Movement Engaging Process Thought (2011). The African American Pulpit named Coleman one of the "Top 20 to Watch - The New Generation of Leading Clergy: Preachers under 40."Contributor Bio:  Howell, Nancy R Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Associate Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. She is the author of The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (2004) and Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (2008). Nancy R. Howell is Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. She is author of A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics (2000). Helene Tallon Russell is Associate Professor of Theology at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is author of Irigaray and Kierkegaard: On the Construction of the Self (2009). Contributor Bio:  Russell, Helene Tallon Helene Tallon Russell is an associate professor of Theology at Christian Theological Seminary. Her areas of research include Kierkegaard, feminist theology, Christian anthropology and process theology. She is an active member at All Saints Episcopal Church in Indianapolis. Russell has published articles in Doxology, Encounter, and The Process Studies Journal. She has given many presentations including the baccalaureate address at Chapman College.