Nicola Slee, one of the world's leading feminist practical theologians, brings together 15 years of papers, articles, talks and sermons, many of them previously unpublished. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of her writing, Slee demonstrates the richness and variety of feminist practical theological writing.

Nicola Slee

Copyright information

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Part 1: Fragments for Fractured Times

Introduction

1. Fragments for Fractured Times: What Feminist Practical Theology Brings to the Table

Part 2: A Feminist Practical Theology of Liturgy and Prayer1

2. Poetry, Psalmody and Prayer in Feminist Perspective

3. How Many Ways are there of Praying?

4. God-language in Public and Private Prayer: A Place for Integrating Gender, Sexuality and Faith

5. Riting the Body: Making and Reclaiming Liturgical Space

Part 3: A Feminist Practical Spirituality

6. A Spirituality of Multiple Overwhelmings

7. The Landscape of the Gap: Charting a Cartography

8. The Work of Standing, the Joy of Dancing: A Spirituality to Sustain the Long Haul

Part 4: A Feminist Practical Theological Poetics

9. Poetry as Divination: What Poetry Means for Faith

10. (W)riting Like a Woman: In Search of a Feminist Theological Poetics

11. Theological Reflection in extremis: Remembering Srebrenica

Part 5: Feminist Theological Practices: Teaching, Reading, Writing and Research

12. Presiding in the Classroom: A Holy Work

13. Research as Transformative Spiritual Practice

14. Reading and Writing as Transformative Spiritual Practice

15. Feminist Qualitative Research as Spiritual Practice: Reflections on the Process of Doing Research

Part 6: A Feminist Practical Theology of the Christa

16. Re-imagining Christ as the Coming Girl: An Advent Experiment

17. #Me Too: A Reflection on Edwina Sandys’ Christa

18. The Crucified Christa: A Re-evaluation1

19. In Praise of God as Feisty Crone

Acknowledgements of Copyright Sources

• Nicola Slee is the foremost feminist practical theologian • Creatively brings together a diverse range of work, much of it previously unpublished • Slee offers insight with each 'fragment' into the context from which it emerges, demonstrating the wealth, creativity and richness of practical theology

If ever a period of time felt 'fractured' it is now. Whichever way we turn, we witness the dismembering and fracturing of many previously taken for granted realities, with maps and borders – physical and metaphorical – being redrawn before our eyes. What place for the feminist practical theologian in such a climate? "In Fragments for Fractured Times", one of the world's leading feminist practical theologians, Nicola Slee, brings together 15 years of papers, articles, talks and sermons, many of them previously unpublished. Collected from diverse times, places, settings and occasions, Slee offers an introduction to each fragment, "holding it up to the light and examining its size, shape, texture and pattern". Drawing on a wide and diverse range of her writing, Slee demonstrates the richness and variety of feminist practical theological writing. What feminist theology brings to the table of scholarly thinking and embodied practice is, she suggests, something creative, artful, prophetic as well as playful – a resource for Christian living and thinking in fractured times.

"Preeminent poet-practical theologian Nicola Slee has gathered a beautiful collage of writings filled with wisdom wrestled from life. At once prayerful and scholarly, these essays deepen faith and broaden religious understanding. A stellar contribution to the discipline and an immense gift to wider conversations about theology and the spiritual life."

"Nicola Slee has long been a leading Feminist Practical theologian in the UK, given her undoubted skill in combining feminist theoretocal reflections, with poetry and qualititive, social science based research. 'Fragments for Fractured Times' is the distillation of a lifetime's commitment not only to feminist theology, but also to the lived experience of women and gilrs, in their actuality of living out faith in a messy and complicated world. From our earliest times as fellow doctoral students studying with the late, great Professor John Hull. I witnessed the fierce intelligence and poetic wisdom of Professor Slee's work. For anyone seeking to understand the interface between feminist theologies of liberation, qualiative research and poetic theological reflection, Fragments for Fractured Times is a must read!"

"This important collection brings together things that long to be together but are too often kept apart. So spirituality reshapes research, liturgy invades the lecture room, desiring is reconciled to conceptualising and the long estrangement of theology from poetics is ended. It takes radical vision, stubborn faith and nurturing love to achieve this miracle. Nicola Slee's rare gifts enable it to happen."

"Nicola Slee has written a book for such a time as this. Fragments for Fractured Times names the spiritual struggle to live well in the midst of the multiple and overwhelming crises of our day, crises which are at once personal, social, political, and ecological. With honesty and poetry, Slee describes an embodied and engaged spirituality. Pleasure and pain, love and fear, prayer and rest, witness and standing, research and writing, presence and emptiness all become spiritual practices. Here is a feminist practical theologian daring to speak her own truth. As Slee writes of Christa, "She is gathering her power." Read these fragments slowly, so that they can inspire your own transformative spiritual quest."

"Few theologians write so beautifully about brokenness and so faithfully about fragments as Nicola Slee. She has the gift of seeing – landscapes, art, human encounters – and probing their deeper meanings. She hears the voices of the marginalised and understands them to be central to God. She turns the seemingly unspeakable into prophetic poetry. This collection is not some industrially processed theological fastfood. Nicola Slee presents a table full of theological tapas – artisanal, seasonal, and local – to be savoured and inspired."

\["For theological readers","Nicola Slee presents a feminist theology that speaks to present faith","You'll find ways that feminist theology offers unity in the face of fracture"\]

"Pre-eminent poet-practical theologian Nicola Slee has gathered a beautiful collage of writings filled with wisdom wrestled from life. At once prayerful and scholarly, these essays deepen faith and broaden religious understanding. A stellar contribution to the discipline and an immense gift to wider conversations about theology and the spiritual life." -- Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Vanderbilt University

"This important collection brings together things that long to be together but are too often kept apart. So spirituality reshapes research, liturgy invades the lecture room, desiring is reconciled to conceptualising and the long estrangement of theology from poetics is ended. It takes radical vision, stubborn faith and nurturing love to achieve this miracle. Nicola Slee’s rare gifts enable it to happen." -- Heather Walton, Glasgow University, UK

“Few theologians write so beautifully about brokenness and so faithfully about fragments as Nicola Slee. She has the gift of seeing – landscapes, art, human encounters – and probing their deeper meanings. She hears the voices of the marginalised and understands them to be central to God. She turns the seemingly unspeakable into prophetic poetry. This collection is not some industrially processed theological fastfood. Nicola Slee presents a table full of theological tapas – artisanal, seasonal, and local – to be savoured and inspired.” --Ruard Ganzevoort, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

"Nicola Slee has written a book for such a time as this. Fragments for Fractured Times names the spiritual struggle to live well in the midst of the multiple and overwhelming crises of our day, crises which are at once personal, social, political, and ecological. With honesty and poetry, Slee describes an embodied and engaged spirituality. Pleasure and pain, love and fear, prayer and rest, witness and standing, research and writing, presence and emptiness all become spiritual practices. Here is a feminist practical theologian daring to speak her own truth. As Slee writes of Christa, “She is gathering her power.” Read these fragments slowly, so that they can inspire your own transformative spiritual quest." -- Mary Clark Moschella, Yale University School of Divinity

"For anyone seeking to understand the interface between feminist theologies of liberation, qualiative research and poetic theological reflection, Fragments for Fractured Times is a must read!" -- Anthony G. Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, Regent's Park College

Offering unity in a time of fracture, Nicola Slee's essays and writings on feminist theology show what it can bring in scholastic and practical spaces.

__Nicola Slee__ is Director of Research at Queen's Foundation Birmingham and Professor of Feminist Practical Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a published poet and an acclaimed author in the fields of feminist and practical theology, spirituality and prayer.

Fragments for Fractured Times

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