Women, Writing, Theology

Women's theology has traditionally been pushed to the margins; it is "spirituality" or "mysticism" rather than theology proper. Theology from women has been transmitted orally, recorded by men as sayings or in hagiographies, or passed on as "stealth theology" in poems, hymns, or practices. In the past forty years, women have claimed theology for themselves and others as womanists, feminists, mujeristas, Asian, third-world, disabled, and queer women. Yet in most academic and ecclesial theology, the contributions of women skirt the borders of the written tradition. This unique volume asks about the conditions of women writing theology. How have women historically justified their writing practices? What internal and external constraints shape their capacity to write? What counts as theology, and who qualifies as a theologian? And what does it mean for women to enter a tradition that has been based, in part, on their exclusion? These essays explore such questions through historical investigations, theoretical analyses, and contemporary constructions.

Introduction: Mending a Broken Lineage: Women, Writing, Theology

by Emily A. Holmes (Christian Brothers University)

1. "Fear and Women's Writing: Choosing the Better Part"

by Michelle Voss (Rhodes College)

2. "'A Wretched Choice?': Evangelical Women and the Word"

by Shelly Rambo (Boston University)

3. "'My God Became Flesh': Angela of Foligno Writing the Incarnation"

by Emily A. Holmes (Christian Brothers University)

4. "Speaking Funk: Womanist Insights into the Lives of Syncletica and Macrina"

by Kendra G. Hotz (Rhodes College)

5. "'A Moor of One's Own': Writing and Silence in Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence"

by Leigh Pittenger (Emory University)

6. "With Prayer and Pen: Reading Mother E. J. Dabney's What It Means to Pray Through"

by Michele Jacques Early (Virginia Union University)

7. "Writing a Life, Writing Theology: Edith Stein in the Company of the Saints"

by Meghan T. Sweeny (Boston College)

8. "Writing Hunger on the Body: Simone Weil's Ethic of Hunger and Eucharistic Practice"

by Elizabeth A. Webb (Liberty, Missouri)

9. "The Body, to be Eaten, to be Written: A Theological Reflection on the Act of Writing in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee"

by Min-Ah Cho (Emory University)

10. "Not with One Voice: The Counterpoint of Life, Diaspora, Women, Theology, and Writing"

by Kristine Suna-Koro (Xavier University)

11. "Embodying Theology: Motherhood as Metaphor/Method"

by Marci W. Mount Shoop (University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, North Carolina)

Postscript: Wounded Writing/Healing Writing

by Wendy Farley (Emory University)