Jeannine Hill Fletcher on “The Courage to Love.” The 16th Annual Women in the Church lecture at Fairfield University | Press Releases

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (September 23, 2016)—Fairfield University welcomes Jeannine Hill Fletcher, professor of Theology at Fordham University, on Wednesday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m. for her lecture “The Courage to Love: Christian Witness in a Weighted World.” Fletcher’s lecture is for the University’s annual Anne Drummy O’Callaghan Lecture on Women in the Church.

The event is free and open to the public, and will be held in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room.

Fletcher’s primary area of research in Christian theologies of religious diversity has focused on the intersection of gender and race, with an interest in the material and political impact of theological projects. She argues for a “cosmopolitan Catholic identity” for the work of faith and healing in a multi-religious world. Her books include Monopoly on Salvation? A Christian Approach to Religious Pluralism (Continuum, 2005) and Motherhood as Metaphor: Engendering Interreligious Dialogue (Fordham University Press, 2013).

In Fletcher’s words, “The Gospel accounts illuminate this love of God, neighbor, self and even enemy in the Christoform pattern of Jesus. But how hard is it to love in today’s world, weighted as it is by racism, disparity and interfaith injustice? Following the extraordinary choices of ordinary women, we will see the possibilities for the ancient wisdom of Christian tradition to transform even our 21 ^st century world when Christians find the courage to love.”

Fletcher serves as the Faculty Director of Service-Learning in Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice. Her current work is informed by membership in the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a multi-generational, multi-religious and multi-racial grassroots organization working for social change.

Her lecture will come from the work of her new book, Love in a Weighted World: On Racism and Religious Diversity in a White Christian Nation , supported by a grant from the Louisville Institute.

The annual lecture honors the memory of O'Callaghan, a Norwalk woman who dedicated herself to religious education and was very active in the Diocese of Bridgeport. The event is co-sponsored by the O'Callaghan Family and the Center for Catholic Studies.

For more information, call (203) 254-4000, ext. 3415, or visit www.fairfield.edu/catholicstudies .

Pictured: Jeannine Hill Fletcher; Credit: Jeannine Hill Fletcher

#Vol. 49, No. 34

Fairfield University is a Jesuit University, rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 36 states, 47 foreign countries, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are enrolled in the University’s five schools. In the spirit of rigorous and sympathetic inquiry into all dimensions of human experience, Fairfield welcomes students from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and engage in open conversations. The University is located in the heart of a region where the future takes shape, on a stunning campus on the Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.