Jeannine Hill Fletcher

Prof. Hill Fletcher grew up in a suburb of Chicago and attended the University of Illinois
as an undergraduate, majoring in English. After a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps,
she attended Harvard Divinity School, earning her MTS in 1996 and ThD in 2001. She
joined the Fordham faculty in 2001.

Prof. Hill Fletcher teaches at the intersection of Systematic Theology and issues of
diversity (religious diversity, Christian cultural diversity, race and gender). Her research
and teaching explore the role of theological thinking in shaping public discourse,
including both activism and legislation. Prof. Hill Fletcher is a board member of the
Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a multi-generational, multi-religious
and multi-racial grassroots organization working for social change.

ThD, Harvard Divinity School
MTS, Harvard Divinity School
BA, University of Illinois

Trained as a feminist theologian, Prof. Hill Fletcher is interested in how religious identity is constructed and mobilized in a pluralistic world. Her current work focuses on how White Christian theology can be oriented toward anti-racist projects for the thriving of diversity in the U.S. context. Her most recent book, The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism and Religious Diversity in America investigates the history of theological thinking informing legislation and envisions Christian symbolism as a resource for transformative politics and activist practice.

The investigation of racism and religious diversity builds on her first bookMonopoly on Salvation? A Feminist Response to Religious Pluralism, which puts Karl Rahner and George Lindbeck in conversation with feminist theories of identity for a theology of religious pluralism. Her second book,Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogueasks how women’s interfaith engagement might serve as a site for a renewed theological anthropology. As a constructive theologian, Prof. Hill Fletcher is interested in an inductive method that begins from ‘on-the-ground’ experience as a point of departure for theological reflection.Motherhood as Metaphor incorporates data from the archives of Maryknoll women in mission, diaries, letters and speeches from the secular women’s movement, and ethnographic research with a women’s dialogue group in Philadelphia.

Books: 

The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism and Religious Diversity in America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2017). Honorable mention in category of ‘Faithful Citizenship’ Catholic Press Association Awards, 2018.

Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogue (Fordham University Press, 2013).

Monopoly on Salvation? A Feminist Approach to Religious Pluralism (Continuum, 2005).

Selected Articles:

“The Promising Practice of Anti-Racist Approaches to Interfaith Studies,” in Toward a Field of Interfaith Studies, edited by Eboo Patel, Jennifer Peace and Noah Silverman. (Forthcoming 2018)

“Marginal Notes: Women and other ‘Others’ in the Theology of Religions,” in The Past, Present and Future of Theologies of Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Terrence Merrigan and John Friday (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 145-163.

“Foreign to the Mind of Christ: Nostra Aetate in America’s Religio-Racial Project,” in The Future of Interreligious Dialogue: A Multi-Religious Conversation on Nostra Aetate, edited by Charles Cohen, Paul Knitter and Ulrich Rosenhagen. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2017)

“Warrants for Reconstruction: Christian Hegemony, White Supremacy” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 51 no. 1 (Winter 2016): 54-79.

“Gift to the Prophet from a King: The Politics of Women in Interreligious Dialogue,” in Salzburger Theologische Zeitschrift 18.2 (Austria) 2014.

“Constructing Religious Identity in a Cosmopolitan World: The Theo-Politics of Interfaith Work” Journal of Interreligious Studies Issue 15 (Fall 2014).

“A Definition of ‘Catholic’: Toward a Cosmopolitan Vision” in The Catholic Studies Reader, ed. Margaret McGuinness and James Fisher (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 129-147. Volume awarded first place in History category by Catholic Press Association 2012.

“Eschatology” in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John Galvin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 621-653.