scholarship

Monthly Highlight: Emilie M. Townes

“In my teaching I want to get students excited about that notion of, you know, you’re not just here to get a Yale degree and have it on your diploma and be able to hang it on your wall…You should be here thinking about what kind of contributions can I make to society….What are you doing that helps enhance the lives of all of us, as opposed to (our) own little idiosyncratic research interests.” – – Emilie M. Townes

Emilie Townes is a pivotal person in the field of Womanist and Christian ethics as well as a foremother and pioneer in Womanist theology. Cornel West of Princeton University said:

“Emilie Townes is the towering womanist ethicist of our time….In this ice age of indifference and evasion, her powerful voice and viewpoint summon us. And we thank her for her vision and courage.”

At an opening address at the Convocation in 2005, Townes stated that there is a need to live in a “deep walking hope” that shapes lives “in ways that are not always predictable, not always safe, rarely conventional” and protests “with prophetic fury the sins of a world, and sometimes theological world views, that encourage us to separate our bodies from our spirits, our minds from our hearts, our beliefs from our actions.” Continue reading “Monthly Highlight: Emilie M. Townes”

Monthly Highlight: Mary E. Hunt

As a Catholic feminist theologian, activist, teacher, and writer Mary Hunt has made a massive impact in the field of feminism and religion. Following the completion of her graduate education (MA, Harvard Divinity School, M.Div., Jesuit School of Theology, Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union), Mary recognized a strong need for theological, liturgical, and ethical development by and for women and responded by co-founding WATER (The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Water) in 1983. Over the last 3+ decades, she has been instrumental in addressing social injustice and creating change in religion and community. Continue reading “Monthly Highlight: Mary E. Hunt”

Occupying Feminism/Religion: Letting Community Consciousness Roam Free By Amy Levin

Becoming involved in the women’s movement means moving from isolation as a woman to community. Through telling my story, I reach out to other women. Through their hearing, which both affirms my story and makes it possible, they reach out to me. I am able to move, gradually, from defensiveness to openness, from fear of questioning to a deep and radical questioning of the premises from which I have lived my life. I experience relief; my anger has been heard, and I am not alone. But I am also frightened; I am undermining my own foundations. The walls come tumbling down. – Judith Plaskow, The Coming of Lilith

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this blog – what it does – in relation to my life, as it promotes the intersection between scholarship, activism, and community. I notice these three elements in most, if not all of the FAR posts, but I’ve been wondering what exactly it means to really embody a life that allows scholarship, activism, and community to mutually mix and inform each other.