Rebecca Todd Peters is a feminist and Christian social ethicist who serves as a professor of Religious Studies at Elon University. Peters' scholarship focuses on questions related to economics, the environmental crisis, globalization, poverty, and women's access to abortion. She claimed to have felt God's presence while receiving both of her abortions.
Education and career
editPeters received her B.A. in Art and English from Rhodes College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York.[1] She was also ordained as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister and worked in the PCUSA national office of Women's Ministries for six years.[2]
Peters is the past President of the American Academy of Religion, Southeast Region, and was Elon University's 2011–12 Distinguished Scholar. She also served as the Founding Director of the Poverty and Social Justice program at Elon.[3]
Publications
editHer books include:
- In Search of the Good Life: The Ethics of Globalization (Continuum, 2004), which won the 2003 Trinity Book Prize.
- Justice in a Global Economy: Strategies for Home, Community and World (Westminster/John Knox, 2006)
- To Do Justice: A Guide for Progressive Christians (Westminster/John Knox, 2008)
- Solidarity Ethics: Transformation in a Globalized World (Fortress Press, 2014)
- Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice (Beacon Press, 2018)
Dominican University of California Professor Laura Stivers has stated that in her book Solidarity Ethics, Peters "lays the groundwork... for how we can come together in solidarity across lines of difference to create movements for justice and structural change."[4]
Peters' book Trust Women has been described as offering "a Christian argument for abortion"[5] and as "shifting the conversation [about abortion] to reproductive justice."[6] Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, has said: “In Trust Women, Rebecca Todd Peters lays bare the real question underlying the abortion debate: whether or not women can be trusted to make their own decisions. She is compassionate and clear-eyed in constructing her faith-based case for abortion, and her voice cuts through the noise to affirm what we at Planned Parenthood have long believed: the best arbiter of a woman’s reproductive destiny is herself.”[7]
Abortion
editPeters has been widely noted for her framing of abortion as "a moral good."[8][9][10]
Other writing
editPeters also writes about current events, theology, justice, and social change on her blog, “To Do Justice," on the Patheos website, and her op-eds have been printed in a variety of newspapers on topics including racism[11][12] and sex education.[13]
References
edit- ^ LaRosa, Patricia E. (2006). "Finding Aid for Rebecca Todd Peters Papers, 1963-1998" (PDF). The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
- ^ Beverly Wildung Harrison, Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics, p. 238
- ^ "Rebecca Todd Peters | HuffPost". www.huffpost.com. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ Stivers05/01/2014, Laura. "Peters, Rebecca Todd. Solidarity Ethics: Transformation in a Globalized World. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014". www.elca.org. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Russell-Kraft, Stephanie (2018-04-11). "A Christian Argument for Abortion: A Q&A With Rebecca Todd Peters". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ "Beyond Abortion: Why Rebecca Todd Peters Wrote 'Trust Women'". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ "Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice". Changing Hands. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ Heldt, Brianna (March 2019). "Emory University Hosts Lecture Touting Abortion as a 'Moral Good'". Townhall. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
- ^ Compton, Cory (2019-02-24). "Emory University hosts 'abortion as a moral good' lecture". Campus Reform. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
- ^ "Trust Women | Reading Religion". readingreligion.org. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
- ^ "YOUR SAY: The threat of Obama". Macon. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ Peters, Rebecca Todd (March 2015). "Horror of lynching must not be buried". Greensboro News and Record. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
- ^ Peters, Rebecca Todd. "Bill would halt progress of sex education in North Carolina". The Times-News. Retrieved 2019-05-07.