Ten Theology Books to Watch For – July 2023

Mission, Race, and Empire: The Episcopal Church in Global Context

Jennifer C. Snow

(Oxford UP)

The history of the Episcopal Church is intimately bound up with the history of empire. The two grew in tandem in the modern era, and as they grew they developed particular ideologies and practices around race. As slavery was carried over into the new political formations of the United States, so too were racially based exclusions carried over in the Episcopal Church.

Mission, Race, and Empire presents a new history of the Episcopal Church from its origins in the early British Empire up to the present, told through the lenses of empire and race. The book demonstrates the dramatic shifts within the Episcopal Church, from initial colonial violence to reflective self-critique. Jennifer Snow centers the stories of groups and individuals that have often been sidelined, including Native Americans, Black Americans, Asian Americans, women, and LGBTQ people, as well as the institutional leaders who sought to create, or fought against, a church that desired to be a house of prayer for all people.

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Daughters of Wisdom: Women and Leadership in the Global Church

Ahida Calderon Pilarski, Ed.

(Cascade Books)

This book offers a window into current realities regarding women’s leadership in the global church and explores strategic recommendations to nurture this leadership in the twenty-first century. The essays in this volume were initially presented at an international conference organized by the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology (CWCIT) at DePaul University in 2018. The reference to “Daughters of Wisdom”in the title for this volume was aimed at capturing the diversity of ways which women have found to exercise their leadership in responding to the challenging and/or hopeful realities of their contextual locations and their faith and social communities.

The authors address particularly different aspects of women’s leadership in the Catholic Church, with a special emphasis on the global South. The contributors are lay and religious people from India, Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, the US, Singapore, and the Philippines. The topics explored in this volume include women’s use of Scripture, the ecclesiological basis for women in church leadership, and the leadership roles that women have been exercising already in grassroots church communities, in Marian devotion, in faith-based social movements, and in theological education.

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