Speaking Schedule, Fall 2005

• Sept. 29, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians Annual Meeting, 7 pm, Panel on Feminist and Womanist Theologies
• Oct. 16-18, New Brunswick, NJ, "Holy Relationships: A Conference on Theology and Sexuality" www.holyrelationships.org
• Nov. 4-6, Milwaukee, WI, Call to Action Conference, www.cta-usa.org/conference.html

Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph.D., is Founding Co-Director of Faith Voices for the Common Good. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Starr King School for the Ministry, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, where she served on the Board of Trustees from 1992-2001. During 2001-2002, she was a Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School Center for Values in Public Life. From 1997-2001, Dr. Brock directed the Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, formerly known as the Bunting Institute. Before her arrival at Harvard, Dr. Brock taught religion and women’s studies for 20 years at a number of colleges and universities. From 1985-89, she directed the Women’s Studies Program at Stephens College, in Columbia, MO. She is a widely sought lecturer and has spoken in Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, and Canada, as well as across the United States. Her work continues to interweave religious questions with issues of justice in the U.S. and international contexts.

Dr. Brock is the author of Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, which won the Crossroads/Continuum Publishing Company award for the most outstanding manuscript in women’s studies in 1988. She is the co-author with Susan Thistlethwaite of Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, which won the Catholic Press Award in Gender Studies in 1996, and the co-author with Rebecca Parker of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us, published by Beacon Press in 2001 and heralded as a major work in feminist narrative theology. In addition to these book projects, she was an editor and contributor to Guide to the Perplexing: A Survival Manual for Women in Religious Studies, and Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation, and is the author of numerous essays on feminist theology, sexuality, and Asian American women.

Among her many contributions to her church, including serving on the General Board and Administrative Committees of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she was the first Chair of the Common Global Ministries Board (1996-98), a joint venture of the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. In 1993, she represented the National Council of Churches on an ecumenical, international, high-level delegation to Guatemala and El Salvador to support the peace-making processes in both countries. Since 1989, she has served as a selector and mentor for the United Methodist Church, Women of Color Scholars Program. Dr. Brock has served on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), chaired the AAR Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, and served for six years on the AAR Committee on Racial/Ethnic Minorities in the Profession.

Her current book project, Saving Paradise, (forthcoming from Beacon Press in fall 2006) investigates early Christian ideas of paradise, the development of theologies of holy war and holy violence in Western Europe during the Crusades, the resulting invention of racism and genocide, the colonization of the Americas, and the contemporary need for a new understanding of paradise.

Areas of Expertise

• Progressive Religions
• Religion and Politics
• Feminism and Religion
• Christian Theology
• Religious Right
• Interfaith Dialogue
• The Gospel of John
• Ideas of Christian Holy War and Empire
• Decriminalization of Prostitution
• Religion and Prostitution in Asia and the U.S.
• Sexuality and Marriage in Christianity