International Patrons of Catherine of Siena College

Professor Elizabeth Johnson

Ph.D., Catholic University of America
M.A., Manhattan College
B.A., Brentwood College

Elizabeth Johnson a Sister in the Congregation of St. Joseph. She is Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University, a Jesuit college in New York .

Teacher, author, editor and public lecturer in theology, Elizabeth Johnson's main areas of research focus on the mystery of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit: the communion of saints including Mary; the dialogue with science and ecological ethics; the problem of suffering; and issues related to justice for women. A former president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America, the oldest and largest association of theologians in the world, and the ecumenical American Theological Society, she serves on the editorial boards of the journals Theological Studies, Horizons: Journal of the College Theology Society, and Theoforum. Active in both graduate and undergraduate programs.

Professor Johnson has published numberous essays in scholarly jounals, chapters in edited books, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and articles in popular religious journals. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Lithuanian, Polish, Korean, and Indonesian. Her public service in her church includes being a theologian on the national Lutherna-Catholic Dialogue; a consultant to the Catholic Bishops' Committe on Women in Church and Society; a theologian on the Vatican-sponsored dialogue between science and religion, and on the Vatican-sponsored study of Christ and the world religions;and a core committee member of the Common Ground Initiative started by Cardinal Jospeh Bernardin to reconcile polarized groups in the church. A partial list of her publications include:

• Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology. New York: Crossroad, 1990.
• She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse . New York: Crossroad 1992 (10th edition 2002).
• Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit. New York: Paulist Press 1993.
• Friends of God & Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints . New York: Continuum 1998.
• Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. New York: Continuum 2003.
• Dangerous Memories: A Mosaic of Mary in Scripture. New York: Continuum, 2004.
• Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God . New York: Continuum 2007.

Her public service in the Church includes being a theologian on the national Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue; a consultant to the US Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Women in Church and Society; a theologian on the Vatican-sponsored dialogue between science and religion, and on the Vatican-sponsored study of Christ and the world religions; and a core committee member of the Common Ground Initiative started by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to reconcile polarized groups in the Church.

Professor Kwok Pui Lan

BA, Chinese University of Hong Kong

BD, MTh, Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology

ThD, Harvard University

Dr Theol (honoris causa), Kampen Theological University (Netherlands).

Dr. Kwok Pui Lan is an internationally known scholar and a pioneer in Asian feminist theology who has published extensively in the areas of Asian feminist theology, biblical hermeneutics, and postcolonial criticism. Currently she serves as the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the past, she has been a Lecturer in the Theology Division of Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has also been Visiting Theologian at Auburn Seminary in New York, Lecturer at Union Theological Seminary, as well as Visiting Professor at Yale Divinity School.

Dr. Kwok has played leadership roles in the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning. She has spoken at the House of Bishops conference and the ATS workshops, as well as delivered lectures across the United States, Asia, and Europe. She is an advisor for the Religion and Modern World Series of Rowman and Littlefield Publishers and serves on the board of several journals. Her research includes Christian theology, world Christianity, spirituality, religion and culture, Asian religions, women's studies, and postcolonial criticism.

Her publications include:

• Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology
• Introducing Asian Feminist Theology
• Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World
• Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860-1927.
• She is coeditor of Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse, Beyond Colonial Anglicanism, Empire and the Christian Tradition, Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology.

From 2000 to 2005, she was coeditor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and has been asked by Routledge to edit a major reference work on Women and Christianity in four volumes.

Active in the ecumenical movement, she has been elected Vice-President of the American Academy of Religion in 2009, and is in line for the Presidency in 2011.

Read a fuller bibliography here.

Dr Aruna Gnanadason

Aruna Gnanadason is Executive Director for Planning and Integration in the General Secretariat of the World Council of Churches.  She was Coordinator of the Justice Peace and Creation Team and of the Women’s Programme of the World Council of Churches before taking up this present position.  She took up her appointment with the WCC in May, 1991. She is married and has two sons. Aruna comes from India and belongs to the Church of South India. She was educated in Bangalore, has a M.A. in English and has completed a part of the Bachelor’s Degree in Theology programme at the United Theological College of Bangalore.  In 2004, she completed a Doctorate in Ministry with the San Francisco Theological Seminary in the US.

Aruna worked as lecturer in English at the Government College, Kolar, and at the National College, Bangalore, for the academic year 1972/73. In 1974 she was invited to join the Vicharodaya College, Women’s College, Ecumenical Christian Centre, Whitefield, Bangalore, as Lecturer, and from June 1976 was invited to become Dean of the programme.

In 1982 she was invited to join the staff of the National Council of Churches in India as Executive Secretary of the All India Council of Christian Women a unit of NCCI, playing an advocacy role for women and building a women’s movement in the church, and helping church women relate to secular women’s movements. In this capacity she has organised national and regional conferences for urban and rural women on themes such as women in development, women in church and society, violence against women, women in the struggle for a just society, women and health, women at the end of the UN Decade, science and technology and its impact on women, etc.

Aruna was a member of the Student Christian Movement of Bangalore and India for five years, and served in various posts in its executive committee. She was an active member of the Free University 1971, a student group involved in a slum project and study of the Indian situation. She was involved with Vimochana, a forum for women’s rights, in Bangalore, and other women’s groups in Tamil Nadu. She continues to be part of a small collective working with urban poor women in Madras. She is a member of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) and has been actively involved in its Women's Commission and is recognised as an Asian woman theologian.

She has been involved in lobbying the Indian Government in an attempt to bring change in the Christian Personal laws relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. She has given talks on such themes ranging from Women and Work, Human Rights and Women’s Rights to Eco-feminist Theology, Indian Feminist Theology and The Church and Violence Against Women . She has addressed major meetings in Europe, North America and Asia on the North-South question, mission priorities, etc.

She has contributed innumerable articles to Christian and secular journals, magazines and books on a wide variety of topics – especially on issues related to women and to

North-South relations. She was editor of several publications including the regular newsletter of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women – the Decade Link. She is the author of the book No Longer a Secret: The Church and Violence Against Women, (1997) and Listen to the Women, Listen to the Earth (2005) both published by the World Council of Churches in the Risk Book Series. She co-edited several books including the WCC Publication Women, Violence and Non-violent Change.

In 1983 she served on the Worship Committee of the WCC IV Assembly in Vancouver, and had served as Vice Moderator of the working group of the Sub-unit on Women in Church and Society of the WCC for the period between the Vancouver and Canberra assemblies. In this capacity she was a member of the Advisory Group which organised the Seoul World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation and was a member of the writing group on Biotechnology to bring in the feminist perspective particularly on reproductive technologies. Now her work concentrates on playing an advocacy role for the participation of women in all aspects of the life of the World Council of Churches and in ensuring that the perspectives and visions of women are included in the programmatic work of the Council.

She is recipient of three honorary doctorates. From the Academy of Indian Ecumenical Theology and Church Administration, an Honorary Doctorate in Theology from the Senate of Serampore Colleges, India, a Doctorate from the Matanzas Theological Seminary, Matanzas, Cuba. She has also completed her earned Doctorate in Ministries (DMin.) from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, USA.