To Change the World
Christology and Cultural Criticism
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Rosemary Radford Ruether is Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Pacific School of Religion. She taught previously at Garrett Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her research and teaching interests include justice issues, particularly in Palestine and Latin America, women and social justice in theological history, ecofeminist theology, Latin American liberation theology, feminist theology in North America, and feminist theologians from the 2nd/3rd World. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Scripps College (1958), an M.A. in Ancient History (1960) and a Ph.D. in Classics and Patristics (1965) from Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. She holds eleven honorary doctorates, the most recent from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1994). She is the author or editor of thirty-two books. Among these are 'Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology' (1983, 1993); 'Woman-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities' (1986); 'Contemporary Catholicism: Crises and Challenges' (1987); 'The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' (1989); 'Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing' (1992); 'Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Feminism, Religion and Ecology' (1996), and 'Gender and Redemption: A Theological History' (1997). Dr. Ruether is also a contributor to 105 book symposia and writes regularly for such journals as 'The National Catholic Reporter' and 'Sojourners'. She is a board member of the Friends of Sabeel (Jerusalem and Ann Arbor, Michigan) and Catholics for a Free Choice (Washington, D.C.).
"Clearly and lucidly written. It belongs on the shelf beside Kung and Schillebeeckx, whose christology it challenges."
Library Journal
"With impressive scholarship and deft economy of language, Rosemary Ruether targets what she believes to be the four most 'pressing' questions for Christians today: 'political commitment in the light of poverty and oppression...anti-Judaism and religious intolerance...justice for the female half of the human race...human survival in the face of chronic environmental abuse.'"
The Christian Century
"The book synthesizes many of Ruether's earlier writings and can serve as an admirable introduction to the significant work of this contemporary theologian."
Emmanuel
"[Ruether's] thesis is a useful and fascinating one, intriguingly and illumninatively illustrated by her choices. Ruether sustains...the assertion of the vital importance of the relationship between cultural criticism and Christology."
AAR Christology Newsletter
"Ruether here turns Christology itself into a principle for the critique of culture and a source for an alternative vision of the human prospect.... There is new voice as well as new insight to the brief, provocative chapters of To Change the World. Ruether is repeating something she has said before, but in doing so she is saying something new.
Spirituality Today