Susannah Cornwall – författare

Queer theology is a significant new development and central to much current teaching and thinking about gender, sexuality and the body. Controversies in Queer Theology provides an overview of the main areas of difference and debate in queer theologies, engaging with and critiquing all the major writers working in this area. Susannah Cornwall shows how this field is still in flux and the highlights implications for employing queer methodologies across theological work.

The SCM Core Text Theology and Sexuality provides a clear overview of the theological debate surrounding sexuality as broadly understood. It gives an outline of the major themes surrounding sexuality in theological perspective, focusing on key thinkers, concepts, and areas of discussion.This student-friendly textbook is aimed at theology students and ordinands studying at undergraduate level 3 and MA level who are undertaking modules on theology and sexuality, gender, sex and the human body. It is also accessible to Christian clergy and laypeople who wish to engage with issues of sexuality in congregations. The use of extensive glossaries, breakout definitions and examples makes the book accessible to those with little existing knowledge of contemporary debates on theology and sexuality.The book includes chapters on definitions of sexuality, sexuality in the Christian tradition, Christian approaches to marriage, celibacy and virginity and same-sex relationships.

What is involved in the practice of thinking theologically about marriage? Key writers and thinkers offer an informed, considered and constructive guide to a number of central questions, including:•Mike Higton on marriage, gender and Christian doctrine•Charlotte Metheun on what we can learn from the history of marriage•Ben Fulford on thinking about marriage with scripture•Julie Gittoes on the liturgical theology of marriage•John Bradbury on marriage as vocation•Brett Gray on reproduction and the body's grace•Susannah Cornwall on being faithful to our sexuate bodies•Rachel Muers on developing a contemporary theology of marriage and much moreReflecting a broad theological and eccesiological spectrum within the Christian tradition, Thinking Again About Marriage offers a vital resource for critical thinking and reflective practice.

Through engagement with theologies of adoption, pro-natalism, marriage, and queer theology, Susannah Cornwall figures developments in models of marriage and family not as distortions of or divergences from the divinely-ordained blueprint, but as developments already of a piece with these institution’s being.Much Christian theological discussion of family, sex and marriage seems to claim that they are (or should be) unchanging and immaculate; that to celebrate their shifting and developing natures is to reject them as good gifts of God. However models of marriage, family, parenting and reproduction have changed and are still, in some cases radically, changing. These changes are not all a raging tide to be turned back, but in continuity with goods deeply embedded in the tradition. Alternative forms of marriage and family stand as signs of the hope of the possibility of change. Changed institutions, such as same-sex marriage, are new beginnings with the potential to be fruitful and generative in their own right. In them, humans create new imaginaries which more fully acknowledge the interactive nature of our relationships with the world and the divine.

Structural Sin and the Death of Institutions explores how Christian understandings of sin map onto institutional failures. It argues that institutions frequently create conditions in which individuals are disempowered and disposed to sin, and that uncritical appeals to redemption, reconciliation and restoration perpetuate harm. The book engages the turn to despair, abolition and termination in recent theologies, and builds on work by those working in other fields including the penal abolitionist movement. It offers an account of sins common to many institutions, including secrecy, exceptionalism, and the over-privileging of institutional reputation, and argues that Christian accounts of forgiveness of sin should not gloss over damage but appropriately remember the past. The volume will appeal to readers interested in Christian doctrines of sin and ecclesiology, including scholars of theological ethics, practical theology, and political theology, and to those asking how far their own continued association with flawed institutions is an unacceptable moral compromise.

Some Christians are anxious and uncomfortable about gender diversity and transition. Sometimes, they understand these issues as a rejection of God's intention for creation. Gender diversity has also been assumed to entail self-deception, mental ill-health, and dysphoria. Yet, humans are inherently transformative creatures with a vocation to shape their own worlds and traditions. Transformative creaturely theology recognizes the capacity of gender to shape humans even as we also question it. In this book, Susannah Cornwall reframes the issues of gender diversity and transition in constructive Christian theological terms. Resisting deficit-based discourses, she presents gender diversity in a way that is positive and non-oppositional. Her volume explores questions of the licit limits of technological interventions for human bodies, how gender diversity maps onto understandings of health, and the ethics of disclosure of gender diversity. It also brings these topics into critical conversation with constructive Christian theologies of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, and eschatology.

Some Christians are anxious and uncomfortable about gender diversity and transition. Sometimes, they understand these issues as a rejection of God's intention for creation. Gender diversity has also been assumed to entail self-deception, mental ill-health, and dysphoria. Yet, humans are inherently transformative creatures with a vocation to shape their own worlds and traditions. Transformative creaturely theology recognizes the capacity of gender to shape humans even as we also question it. In this book, Susannah Cornwall reframes the issues of gender diversity and transition in constructive Christian theological terms. Resisting deficit-based discourses, she presents gender diversity in a way that is positive and non-oppositional. Her volume explores questions of the licit limits of technological interventions for human bodies, how gender diversity maps onto understandings of health, and the ethics of disclosure of gender diversity. It also brings these topics into critical conversation with constructive Christian theologies of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, and eschatology.

Intersex bodies have been figured as troubling by doctors, parents, religious institutions and society at large. In this book, scholars draw on constructive and pastoral theologies, biblical studies, and sociology, suggesting intersex's capacity to 'trouble' is positive, challenging unquestioned norms and assumptions in religion and beyond.

Mainstream Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation. However, it has also asserted the complementarity of "normal" male and female physiology. Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ offers the first systematic theology of the intersexed body.The book analyzes the theological implications of physical intersex conditions and their medical treatment. The medical assumption of what constitutes male and female bodies is shown to raise essential questions about the meaning of incarnation and bodiliness. The book argues for a theology that speaks to stigmatized and marginal bodies, examining the impact of such a theology on sex, marriage, sexuality, perfection, healing, and the resurrected body.