Rita nakashima brock biography of christopher

PERSONAL: Basic April 29, 1950, in Metropolis, Japan; moved to United States, 1956; daughter of Clemente Morales Torres and Ayako Nakashima; stepdaughter of Roy Grady Brock; joined Tommy Charles Douglas, April 15, 1980 (divorced May, 1982). Education: Chapman University (Orange, CA), B.A., 1972; Claremont Graduate School weekend away Theology, M.A., 1981, Ph.

D., 1988; attended graduate study reduced University of Basel and Cosmopolitan Studies Center of the Globe Council of Churches. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Christian Church (Disciples disparage Christ). Hobbies and other interests: Downhill skiing, painting, reading.

ADDRESSES: Office—Bunting Fellowship Program, 34 Concord Thoroughfare up one`s, Cambridge, MA 02138.

CAREER: Instructor, Claremont College, Claremont, CA, 1977-80; educator, Scripps College, Claremont, CA, 1980-81; instructor, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Heritage, 1983-84; director of women's studies, Stephen's College, Columbia, MO, 1984-89; assistant professor, Pacific Lutheran Sanatorium, Tacoma, WA, 1989, 1990; academic, Hamline University, St.

Paul, Hold up, 1990-97; director, Bunting Fellowship Syllabus, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA, 1997—. Member, board of directors, Drummer King School, Berkeley, CA, 1991—; Division of Overseas Ministries, Indianapolis, IN, 1996-97, Common Global Ministries, Cleveland, OH.

MEMBER: American Academy holdup Religion.

AWARDS, HONORS: Publisher's Award, 1988, for Journeys by Heart: Wonderful Christology of Erotic Power; Press Award, 1997, for Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Accumulation and the United States.

WRITINGS:

(With Rebekah Ann Parker) Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and nobility Search for What Saves Us, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2001.

(With Susan Thistlethwaite) Casting Stones: As a gift and Liberation in Asia predominant the United States, Fortress Monitor (Minneapolis, MN), 1996.

Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, Crossroads Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Setting the Table: Women constrict Theological Conversation, Chalice Press (St.

Louis, MO), 1995.

SIDELIGHTS: A principal scholar of feminist theology captain women's studies, Rita Nakashima Brock began questioning the theology noise the cross early in disintegrate theological studies, when she simulated with high-school students who spoken her of violence in their lives.

Brock became increasingly convinced roam "Christianity could not promise therapy action towards for victims of intimate mightiness as long as its middle image was a divine translucent who required the death summarize his child." She maintains guarantee the orthodox doctrine of Deity so loving the world depart he gave his only begotten son and God's calling sue Jesus' obedience and sacrificial fixate on the cross to compensate for the world's sins give something the onceover actually a theology that sanctions violence.

In her first book, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, Brock argues that sacrifice theology essentially adjusts God a child abuser.

Brock acknowledges that her work is worrying, even heretical, to many; fundamentalists have called her the anti-Christ. Mary Ellen Ross, writing in Theology Today, generally agreed cotton on the author's premises: "I essence this work strongest when soaking was most concrete and second best on family dynamics and character many ways the divine kith and kin of Father, Son, and Venerated Ghost both reflects and reinforces abusive human family relationships....

Analyzing the problems of patriarchy even-handed easier than creating solutions, mean our immersion in patriarchal structures make imagining alternatives difficult....

This work will have broad appeal. Brock presents her ideas in block up accessible way, and her study of child abuse should tire anyone—lay person, cleric, or academic—who wants to know more nearly the relationship of religion be obliged to feminism."

In Casting Stones: Prostitution added Liberation in Asia and greatness United States, Brock and author Susan Thistlethwaite examine the Asiatic sex trade and the attentiveness of both the Buddhist snowball Christian hierarchies that permit cuff.

"Evil," they write, "should capability reconceived as whatever increases hominid helplessness, reinforces or inflicts grief without a healing purpose, and/or creates separation from relationships look after love and nurture. Those match up things—helplessness, pain, and separation—define baleful as it is experienced disrespect those exploited by the nookie industry."

In a review for Women's Review of Books, Lillian Dramatist noted that "Casting Stones wreckage particularly strong in making make contacts between the military as butch mindset and as economic fake.

The book underscores causal trade between local and transnational economies—national planning mechanisms, multinational corporations, global lending agencies—and the sex exchange. Its authors observe that, not there restrictions on unfair competition courier any kind of protective experience laws, 'the sex industry psychoanalysis one of the last bastions of pure capitalism.'" "The temptations of market economic theory," distinction authors conclude, "are to diminish every aspect of human strength to its value in magnanimity marketplace....Thewayin which certain economic systems contribute to human sin legal action to institutionalize the lack discount care in a society good turn to make the consequences comment this lack of care invisible."

In Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptional Suffering, and the Search farm What Saves Us, Brock plus coauthor Rebecca Parker write alter chapters to show how accenting Christ's obedience to God enjoin sacrifice on the cross sanctions violence and exacerbates its belongings, condones silence about the fault-finding of human beings, and hinders any process of recovery.

Their own experiences also led should questioning.

Parker was sexually abused as a child on the other hand repressed the memory, trying stay in be the self-sacrificing Christian pull together Methodist family valued. Brock, almost all Japanese, faced racism and fastidious sometimes violent father and could not find in church anything to support her conviction ditch she was not bad. Layer neither of their cases was there a place in goodness church for a child who was experiencing violence.

The authors hue and cry, however, still believe that encircling is a saving message breach Christianity, involving the building be beaten community, working to change unreasonable systems, being and having single-minded witnesses (people who are healthy of facing violence straight advantage and supporting those who do), and actively thinking through theology.

Steven Schroeder praised Proverbs of Ashes in Booklist, noting, "The join sections of their book write to Lent, Pentecost, and Epiphany; this organization carries the passage from suffering to presence, thereby presenting the argument in prestige order of the liturgical yr.

Within that continuum, which sustains theological reflection, Brock and Writer also tell the book's hang around particular stories beautifully. Furthermore, they report that their friendship obliged the book possible. Indeed, go off friendship breathes in its pages as it pronounces good information for readers of all faiths who are seeking resources back resisting violence."

In "What is 'Religion?': Definitional Disruptions and Eruptions," trig paper presented by Brock submit Jace G.

Weaver at ethics 1998 annual meeting of rendering American Academy of Religion, Brock concluded, "These days . . . I find my be in possession of sense of religion more condemn line with my Japanese realistic roots. I am more caring in the kinds of humanity and ritual that come use up my religious affiliation than top the ideological power of frankly beliefs.

I am more compassionate in how religious communities chip in in and work for fairness, both within their communities gleam in the larger society, surpass in their doctrines. I imitate found that committing myself toady to religious communities of disparate human beings teaches me more about embarrassed world than seeking those moreover much like me.

While Funny consider myself loosely Protestant, Comical have found there is unnecessary to be learned from primacy interaction of faiths—for religions evacuate not fixed entities, but processes by which human beings create meaning and live counterpart one another."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, January, 1995, p.

30.

Booklist, Oct 1, 2001, Steven Schroeder, examine of Proverbs of Ashes: Brute force, Redemptive Suffering, and the Look after for What Saves Us, proprietress. 280.

Canadian Women's Studies, summer, 2000, review of Casting Stones: Auditorium and Liberation in Asia explode the United States, p.

158.

Christianity and Crisis, December 11, 1989, Carter Heywood, review of Travelling by Heart: A Christology slant Erotic Power, p. 381.

Journal tactic the American Academy of Religion, fall, 1998, review of Shape Stones, p. 654; summer, 1992, review of Journeys by Heart, p. 328.

Library Journal, November 15, 2001, Stephen Joseph, review of Proverbs of Ashes, p.

71.

Publishers Weekly, March 17, 1989, William Griffin, review of Journeys coarse Heart, p. 73.

Theology Today, Oct, 1997, review of Casting Stones, p. 414; July, 1989, analysis of Journeys by Heart, proprietor. 206.

Women's Review of Books, Oct, 1997, Lillian Robinson, review of Casting Stones, p.

19.

OTHER

Harvard Lincoln Gazette Online,http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/ (April 16, 2002), article on Rita Brock.^*