Enfleshing Theology

Enfleshing Theology examines the groundbreaking work of M. Shawn Copeland, particularly its implications for questions of embodiment, discipleship, and politics. Including a brief introduction, an interview, seventeen essays, and a selected bibliography, this volume highlights the intersectional theological nature of Copeland’s work.

Enfleshing Theology honors and engages the life work of M. Shawn Copeland, whose theology is groundbreaking and prophetic, traversing the fields of Catholic Theology, Black Theology, Womanist Thought, and Semiotics. The book opens with a brief introduction, and then moves to an interview with Copeland, which connects her theology to her life stories. The conversation with Copeland also provides a backdrop to the seventeen essays that follow, extending Copeland’s theological worldview. The contributions are divided according to the following sections: embodiment, discipleship, and politics. The essays in the section entitled "Engaging Embodiment" critically reflect on the importance of embodiment in Christian theology and contemporary culture. Following Copeland’s lead, authors in this section theorize and theologize the body, particularly (but not limited to) Black women’s bodies, as a locus theologicus that reveals, mediates, and shapes the splendor and suffering reality of human existence. The next section, entitled "Engaging Discipleship," focuses on the concrete challenges of following Jesus in today’s world. The essays included in this section reflect on Copeland’s focus on Jesus’ particularity in terms of his solidarity with and for others. Discipleship is about modeling and mentoring, so scholars in this section also comment on Copeland’s contribution to teaching and pedagogy. The last section, entitled "Engaging the Political," interrogates the political implications of the theological. It is noteworthy that there are two trajectories of the political here, one is Copeland’s development of political theology through the lens of Canadian Jesuit theologian, Bernard Lonergan. The other trajectory focuses on the work of theology in contemporary art and politics. These three sections are fluid and overlap with one another. Several of the articles on embodiment speak to questions of solidarity and a few of the essays on discipleship clearly present as political. The ways in which each of the contributions in this volume overlap with each other attests to the complex nature of doing constructive theology today, and even more how Copeland’s work is at the forefront of that multi-layered, polyvalent, intersectional theological work.

Introduction by Michele Saracino

An Interview with M. Shawn Copeland, with Robert Rivera and Michele Saracino

Part 1: Engaging Embodiment

1. “A Body of Broken Bones”: Shawn Copeland and the New Anthropological Subject - Roberto S. Goizueta

2. “Today a Black [Wo]man Was Lynched:” A Womanist Christology of Sandra Bland - Eboni Marshall Turman

3. Mapping Methodological Directions for Womanist Scholarship - Katie G. Cannon

4. Learning to Enflesh Freedom: Returning to the Clearing - Laurie Cassidy

5. Black Eucharist: Practical Discipleship for the Human Race - Susan Abraham

6. Black Lives Matter as Enfleshed Theology - Stephen G. Ray Jr.

Part 2: Engaging Discipleship

7. “Enacted Discipleship” as Christian Anthropology - Mary Ann Hinsdale, IHM

8. Standing at the Foot of the Cross - Nancy Pineda-Madrid

9. Enfleshing Freedom: A Christological Focus on Discipleship in Light of the Crucified Jesus and Black Bodies - Shawnee M. Daniels-Sykes

10. Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain and Biblical Studies - Deirdre Dempsey

11. To Be a Thinking Margin: Reframing Christian Intellectual Life - Willie James Jennings

Part 3: Engaging the Political

12. The Significance and Singularity of M. Shawn Copeland’s Methodology - Susan L. Gray

13. God’s Image Revealed in Authentic Living: Mutual Enrichment through the Drama of Theological Education across Cultures - Kathleen Williams, RSM

14. White Supremacy and Christian Theology - Karen Teel

15. The Dark Night(s) of Malcolm X: Apophatic Mysticism and African American Spirituality - Bryan N. Massingale

16. Disturbing the Aesthetics of Race: M. Shawn Copeland and the Justice of Beauty - Maureen O’Connell

17. Drawing Close to Bodily Pain and Grace: Copeland, Social Sin, and Solidarity’s Incarnational Imperative - Christine Firer Hinze

Selected Bibliography of M. Shawn Copeland