The achievement of our humanity comes about only through immersion in concrete, visceral, embodied relational experience, yet for many human beings, that achievement is stamped by the struggle against oppression in history, society, and religion. In this incisive and important work, distinguished theologian M. Shawn Copeland demonstrates with rare insight and conviction how Black women's historical experience and oppression cast a completely different light on our theological ideas about being human. Copeland argues that race, embodiment, and relations of power reframe not only theological anthropology but also our notions of discipleship, church, Eucharist, and Christ. Enfleshing Freedom is a work of deep moral seriousness, rigorous speculative skill, and sharp theological reasoning. This new edition incorporates recent theological, philosophical, historical, political, and sociological scholarship; engages with current social movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo; and presents a new chapter on the body.

* Harvests insights of black women's historical experience for theology * Rethinks what it means to be human in light of African American experience

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.

From her perspective as a white feminist theologian, Karen Teel dialogues with five womanist thinkers to develop a Christian theology of the body that can compel Christians, especially U. S. Christians of European descent, to actively resist the sin of racism.

Existential Theology: An Introduction offers a formalized and comprehensive examination of the field of existential theology, in order to distinguish it as a unique field of study and view it as a measured synthesis of the concerns of Christian existentialism, Christian humanism, and Christian philosophy with the preoccupations of proper existentialism and a series of unfolding themes from Augustine to Kierkegaard. To do this, Existential Theology attends to the field through the exploration of genres: the European traditions in French, Russian, and German schools of thought, counter-traditions in liberation, feminist, and womanist approaches, and postmodern traditions located in anthropological, political, and ethical approaches. While the cultural contexts inform how each of the selected philosopher-theologians present genres of "existential theology," other unique genres are examined in theoretical and philosophical contexts, particularly through a selected set of theologians, philosophers, thinkers, and theorists that are not generally categorized theologically. By assessing existential theology through how it manifests itself in "genres," this book brings together lesser-known figures, well-known thinkers, and figures that are not generally viewed as "existential theologians" to form a focused understanding of the question of the meaning of "existential theology" and what "existential theology" looks like in its varying forms.

Bringing together thinkers from philosophy of religion, religious studies, music, art, and film, while drawing on a wealth of phenomenological resources and methods, a team of renowned scholars provide new vantages on the question of how art is an expression of the human desire for God. In three interrelated parts, chapters employ phenomenological tools to propose new ways for speaking of the desire for God. Scholars first draw upon music, sculpture, film, and painting to develop ways of expressing diverse philosophical and religious aspects characteristic of aesthetic experience. The discussion then opens up to examine the mystical and wounded aspects of embodied interface with God. The final part investigates embodied aesthetic praxis in philosophy of religion and religious studies. With several contributions engaging with the embodied, aesthetic experience of underrepresented voices, Art, Desire, and God offers constructive phenomenological bridges across divides of disciplines, aesthetic experiences, and embodied actions.

Nancy Pineda-Madrid re-conceives traditional Christian notions of salvation by closing attending to the experience of the embattled women of Ciudad Ju rez in Mexico, where hundreds have been slain and where survivors have found healing and salvation in solidarity and community practices that resist rather than acquiesce in the violence.