In Women Healing Earth noted theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether brings together illuminating writings of fourteen Latin American, Asian, and African women on the meaning of eco-theological issues in their own contexts - and the implications they have for women in the first world. Ruether has spent the last several years exploring the environmental crisis, the roles of religion and feminists, and what third-world women have to say. Ecofeminists in the North must listen carefully to women in the South since common problems can only be solved by understanding cultural and historical differences. When women of the South reflect on ecological themes, these questions are rooted in life and death matters, not in theory, nor statistics. As Ruether writes, "Deforestation means women walking twice as far each day to gather wood .... Pollution means children in shantytowns dying of dehydration from unclean water". Impoverishment of the environment equals literal impoverishment for the vast majority of people on the planet. In addressing the intertwining issues of ecology, of class and race, of religion and its liberative elements, Women Healing Earth offers profound insights for all women and men involved in the struggles to overcome violence against women and nature, and to ensure ecological preservation and social justice.

From the earliest interactions of Christians with the Roman Empire to today's debates about the separation of church and state, the Christian churches have been in complex relationships with various economic and political systems for centuries. Renowned theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether analyzes the ways the Christian church has historically interacted with powerful systems such as patriarchy, racism, slavery, and environmentalism, while looking critically at how the church shapes these systems today. With a focus on the United States, Christianity and Social Systems provides an introductory analysis of the interactions between the churches and major systems that have shaped western Christian and post-Christian society. Ruether discusses ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism, and includes three country case studies-Nicaragua, South Africa, and North and South Korea-to further illustrate the profound influences Christianity and social systems have with each other. This book is neither an attack on the relationship between Christianity and these systems, nor an apology, but rather a nuanced examination of the interactions between them. By understanding how these interactions have shaped history, we can more fully understand how to make ethical decisions about the role of Christianity in some of today's most pressing social issues, from economic and class disparities to the environmental crisis.

From the earliest interactions of Christians with the Roman Empire to today's debates about the separation of church and state, the Christian churches have been in complex relationships with various economic and political systems for centuries. Renowned theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether analyzes the ways the Christian church has historically interacted with powerful systems such as patriarchy, racism, slavery, and environmentalism, while looking critically at how the church shapes these systems today. With a focus on the United States, Christianity and Social Systems provides an introductory analysis of the interactions between the churches and major systems that have shaped western Christian and post-Christian society. Ruether discusses ideologies, such as liberalism and socialism, and includes three country case studies-Nicaragua, South Africa, and North and South Korea-to further illustrate the profound influences Christianity and social systems have with each other. This book is neither an attack on the relationship between Christianity and these systems, nor an apology, but rather a nuanced examination of the interactions between them. By understanding how these interactions have shaped history, we can more fully understand how to make ethical decisions about the role of Christianity in some of today's most pressing social issues, from economic and class disparities to the environmental crisis.

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of "nature ethics," offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of nature ethics, offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

Violence remains endemic in today's society. Religious morality and social prejudice can lead to many acts of violence going unnoticed. 'Weep Not for Your Children' presents a selection of essays that examine the ways in which religion and violence interconnect. The presence of violence in the origins of cultural and religious norms is examined. The essays cover a wide range of examples of violence: from the Holocaust to domestic violence and from the violence created by economic systems to that created by the construction of gender itself. 'Weep Not for Your Children' challenges and provokes the reader to think beyond traditional associations of good and evil.

Traces the historical and ideological patterns of the view Americans have of themselves as an elect nation inhabiting a promised land and enjoying a uniquely favored relation with God and a mission to spread redemption qua democracy throughout the world. This view, coupled with racial exclusivism, privileges whites and marginalizes other citizens. In the 18th and 19th centuries a doctrine of the rights of man excluded the two primary non-white groups present in the territory, Native Americans and Africans. Manifest Destiny justified the expansion across the North American continent, while forcing Mexico through war to cede a third of its land, excluding Mexicans, Indians, Africans and Asians from this expanded citizenry. In the 20th century, American perception of its mission became imperialist beyond the continental borders, occupying the Philippines and the Caribbean, claiming hegemonic dominance over Latin America and the Pacific islands. Since WWII, the US has taken the role of Global policeman to enforce neocolonial relations over much of the third world and beyond.

America, Amerikkka traces the historical and ideological patterns of the U.S. American view of themselves as an elect nation inhabiting a promised land and enjoying a uniquely favored relation with God and a mission to spread redemption qua democracy throughout the world. This view of unique election has been coupled racial exclusivism privileging and marginalizing non-whites as citizens of the nation. In the 18th and 19th centuries a doctrine of the rights of man excluded the two primary non-white groups present in the territory, Native Americans and Africans. Manifest Destiny justified the expansion across the North American continent, while forcing Mexico through war to cede a third of its land, excluding Mexicans, Indians, Africans and Asians from this expanded citizenry. In the 20th century, American perception of its mission became imperialist beyond the continental borders, occupying the Philippines and the Caribbean

Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions addresses the practical relevance of the interconnection of feminism, ecology, and religious theological thought, and will ask questions about the lack of attention to gender issues in both ecological theology and deglobalization theory. The book knits together four concerns: globalization, interfaith ecological theology, ecofeminism, and deglobalization movements and thought. It examines how gender needs to be connected with inter-faith ecological theology and with critical analysis of globalization. It asks how to connect theory and practice; and how theoretical views about a more earth friendly theology have actual relevance to the deglobalization struggle. The book looks at these issues comparatively across different world religions and across different regions of the earth.

Description: Breaking the Glass Box includes spiritual formation process for liberation from gender oppression through multiple awareness practices of conflicts in han-based Korean culture of society and church. The metaphor has multiple liberation process: ""invisible glass box,"" ""visible glass box,"" ""breaking the glass box,"" and ""sticky rice."" This liberation process includes consicentization, consciousness-raising, and a heightened cultural awareness in discerning the reasons of interpersonal conflicts in Korean socio-cultural contexts. By exploring the multi-faceted han-jeong dynamics with Feminist theology and Asian Feminism, the important aspects of re-imaging the self and God as spiritual formation have been examined with contemplative practices of Internal Family System (IFS) and self-compassion to create the healthy jeong-filled solidarity group. The ""sticky rice"" is a new cultural paradigm for Korean women's jeong-filled hospitality. The broken pieces of the glass box will be transformed into the grains of rice by the positive jeong-filled hospitality of cooking sticky rice. In the solidarity group of jeong-filled hospitality, represented by rice ready to cook a serving of delicious sticky rice, people can enjoy the fellowship of healing, forgiving, and reconciling of the sticky rice. These images are intended to promote a healthy community of ministry and spirituality for Korean women.

In telling the story of her sons thirty-year struggle with schizophrenia, Ruether lays bare the inhumane treatment throughout history of people with mental illness. Despite countless reforms by idealistic reformers and an enlightened understanding that mental illness is a physical disease like any other, conditions for people who struggle with mental illness are little improved. Ruether asks why this is so and then goes on to imagine what we would do for people with mental illness if we really cared.

Modernity and postmodernity are intensely contested interpretive spaces. In a time, or mood, that many in the industrialized world consider to be "postmodern," what should the contribution of Christian theology be? What are its chances, its challenges, its hopes and limits? This volume represents a collection of approaches by various authors whose work engages the contemporary theological space-modern, postmodern, and otherwise - in ways that are in critical conversation with "radical orthodoxy," but suggesting alternative approaches and readings. The authors in this volume respond to "radical orthodoxy's" controversial claims about postmodern space, in ways that aim to acknowledge the importance of the questions and critiques raised by Milbank, Pickstock, Ward, and others, but that proposes different responses to issue crucial to contemporary theological discourse such as: the difficulty to engage the powerful critiques offered by radical orthodoxy, while resisting the totality of vision and approach, the struggle for justice against poverty and predatory capitalism, theologies of incarnation, theological gender constructions, participation and presence in the eucharistic liturgy, narrative legitimacy through periodization, the radical nature of ethnic and cultural Otherness, reciprocity and redemption, immanence and transcendence, feminist philosophy of religion, a Jewish feminist re-enchantment of the world, theological eurocentrism, theologies of gift and economic exchange, and constructive theology.

Introductions in Feminist Theology (IFT) explores various theological topics that challenge patriarchal theology and suggest liberating alternatives. The authors and editors seek to expand theological discourse by providing reliable guides to the history of thinking, current issues and debates, and possible future developments in feminist theology.

This study on the life and thought of St. Gregory of Nazianzus was written by feminist theologian and Patristic scholar, Rosemary Radford Ruether, as her doctoral dissertation and originally published by Oxford University Press in 1969. The focus of the study is the tension and conflict in the life of Gregory of Nazianzus and his contemporary Christian companions, such as Basil the Great and Gregory Nyssa, between rhetoric and philosophy. This is a conflict that has deep roots in Greek culture, going back to the time of Isocrates and Plato. It reflects two major streams of Greek culture, the literary tradition of classical education and public argumentation, with its often specious use of language, and the philosophical search for truth which saw itself as culminating in spiritual communion with the Good, the True and the Beautiful. In the Christian context of the fourth century A.D. this conflict had been translated into a tension between classical literary education, which still shaped the socialization of Christian leaders such as Gregory and informed the patterns of their preaching, and their search for contemplative union with God. Gregory and others spoke of the ascetic life of emerging Christian monasticism as the philosophical life, thus incorporating this tension between rhetoric and philosophy into their own lives. For Gregory and other Christian leader of his time, Christians should renounce worldly ambition and even Christian positions of power, such as episcopacy, to pursue the separated life of monastic discipline, yet even in this ascetic retirement they found it difficult not to continue to employ the much-loved literary culture of their youthful education. This book shows how this tension played out in Gregory's own life, including his relation with his friend and school companion, Basil the Great, who shared the quest for the monastic life with Gregory, but later became a bishop and sought to secure his power against church rivals by forcing episcopacy upon both Gregory Nazianzus and his own brother, Gregory Nyssa. The volume also studies the way in which Gregory of Nazianzus employs rhetorical conventions to shape his own literary style in his sermons and treatises. It then focuses on the anthropology and cosmology that underlay Gregory's understanding of the philosophical life as a journey of communion with God. In the final chapter it reviews Gregory's own struggles to find a modus vivendi between the two cultures of classical literary education and the ascetic, contemplative life. This is a struggle that did not end with the fourth century, but continued to shape a Christian culture that adopted classical Greek literature as the basis of its educational curriculum and yet also taught the ideals of the soul's quest for God. Rosemary Radford Ruether has been a pioneer Christian feminist theologian for over three decades and is among the most widely read theologians in the world. Her book, Sexism and God-Talk, a classic in the field of theology, remains the only systematic feminist treatment of the Christian symbols to date. With wide-ranging scholarship, Dr. Ruether has written and edited over thirty books and hundreds of articles and reviews.

Drawing from primary source documents such as diaries, letters, speeches, sermons, essays, and books from seventeenth-century colonial settlements in North America to today, this volume recovers the contributions of women to American religion. With its breadth and richness of sources it will be of interest and use to feminists, church historians, and students.