From the Shores of Silence

Conversations in Feminist Practical Theology

Nicola Slee, Ashley Cocksworth,Rachel Starr,Stephen Burns

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780334060987
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Feminist practical theology has emerged in the gap between wider feminist and wider practical theology. It celebrates distinctive concerns, arguments, emphases, and questions – unafraid to re-form practical theology in shape and substance, and to guide feminist theology towards the silences and stories of human lives that some professional theologies (including those shaped by feminist commitments) sometimes overlooks. Feminist practical theology is bold in exploration of doctrinal themes in poetic and prayerful modes, characteristically collaborative and in search of alliances with other advocacy perspectives. In the UK, such commitments have been exemplified by Nicola Slee, whom this volume honours. Chapters invite readers into wide ranging conversations that flow from young women's experiences at university, poetic practice as theology, queer priesthood, theologies of critical masculinities, women presiding in worship, Black and decolonial theologies adjacent to feminist convictions, confrontations with sexual violence, rest and rewilding, and a post-menopausal Mary. Contributors are: Al Barrett, Gavin D'Costa, Deborah Kahn-Harris, Michael N. Jagessar, Sharon Jagger, Rachel Mann, Jenny Morgans, Eleanor Nesbitt, Karen O'Donnell, Mark Pryce, Anthony G. Reddie, Ruth Shelton, Anne Phillips and Alison Wooley.

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Contents
• Dedication
• Contributors
• The River
• 1. Introduction: Exploring the Boundaries of Speech
• Part 1: Poetry
• Trapeze Artiste without Bird
• 2. Nicola Slee as Poet-Theologian: In a Company of Voices
• 3. The Poetry of Priesthood: Writing the Body of Mary, Christa, of You, and of Me
• 4. Registering: Theology and Poetic Practice
• Part 2: Faith and Feminism
• Christa Ignored
• 5. The Faith Lives of Women and Girls: An Expanding Story
• 6. Faithing, Friendship and Feeling at Home: Three Women Encounter University Chaplaincy
• 7. Reading for the Roar: Recognizing Sexual Violence in Esther 2 and Judges 21
• 8. Mary the Crone
• Part 3: The Praying Body
• Christa has Bunions
• 9. Presiding Like a Woman: Menstruating at the Altar
• 10. balm yard musings – decolonizing worship
• 11. Praying Like a White, Straight Man: Reading Nicola Slee ‘Between the Lines’
• Part 4: Moving Theology
• Beaford Church
• 12. Transformative, Christian Religious Education and Praxis Forms of Learning
• 13. Beyond Words: ‘The Voyage Out’
• Return
• Permissions