New Research from Harvard Religion Scholars

Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (co-editor), Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology This volume contributes to the maturation of method in the field of comparative theological studies, learning across religious borders, by bringing together essays drawing on different Christian traditions of learning, Judaism and Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the wisdom of senior scholars, and also insights from a younger generation of scholars who have studied theology and religion in new ways and are more attuned to the language of the “spiritual but not religious.”

Michael D. Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions What does it mean to live in time, between the unforeseeable and the irreversible? In The Varieties of Temporal Experience, Michael Jackson demonstrates the significance of a phenomenology of time

Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity A historical and ethnographic study of the environmental movement, Eco-Alchemy uncovers for the first time the profound influences of anthroposophy and its founder, Rudolf Steiner, whose holistic worldview, rooted in esoteric spirituality, inspired the movement. Dan McKanan shows that environmentalism is itself a complex ecosystem and that it would not be as diverse or as transformative without the contributions of anthroposophy.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza examines the political understandings of ekklesia and household in Ephesians as well as the roles that such understandings have played in the formation of early Christian communities and that still shape such communities today. By paying close attention to the function of androcentric biblical language within Ephesians, Schüssler Fiorenza engages in a critical feminist emancipatory approach to biblical interpretation that calls for conscientization and change, that is, for the sake of wo/men’s salvation or well-being.

Todne Thomas (co-editor), Assistant Professor of African American Religions (HDS) and Suzanne Young Murray Assistant Professor (Radcliffe Institute) This volume examines the significance of spiritual kinship—or kinship reckoned in relation to the divine—in creating myriad forms of affiliations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Rather than confining the study of spiritual kinship to Christian godparenthood or presuming its disappearance in light of secularism, the authors investigate how religious practitioners create and contest sacred solidarities through ritual, discursive, and ethical practices across social domains, networks, and transnational collectives.