On Human Flourishing and Collective Liberation

Reclaiming the Garden

In this episode, we discuss a topic that April wrote a 15 page paper about over her spring term: what is the human being fully alive, in light of God/the Divine? We explore what it means to be humans made in the image of God, what it means to bring the fullness of ourselves to God and one another and live authentically, and how the sharing of our stories and our diversity celebrated in community can lead to collective human flourishing and liberation (and April gushes a little about Jesus). We also discuss the specific gifts of neurodivergent and queer people that can contribute to human flourishing, and bring up the works of April’s many conversation partners, which are listed below.

Bibliography:

Boff, Leonardo. “Trinity.” Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology.

Edited by Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuria. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996.

Cheng, Patrick. Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology. New York: Seabury Books,

2011.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Bloomsbury

Academic, 2018.

Gunton, Colin. “Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the

Imago Dei.” Persons, Divine and Human: King’s College Essays in Theological

Anthropology. Edited by Christoph Schwöbel and Colin Gunton. Edinburgh: T&T Clark,

1991.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Kim, Grace Ji-Sun and Susan M. Shaw. Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide.

Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2018.

Leidenhag, Joanna. “Autism, Doxology, and the Nature of Christian Worship.” Journal of

Disability & Religion 26, no. 2 (2022).

Leidenhag, Joanna. “The Challenge of Autism for Relational Approaches to Theological

Anthropology.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 23, no. 1 (January 2021).

Little, April. “Who is God?” Unpublished paper, The Seattle School of Theology and

Psychology, 2023.

Mayfield, D. L. “A Good Christian Woman.” Healing is My Special Interest. June 13 2023.

https://dlmayfield.substack.com/p/a-good-christian-woman This post is locked behind a

subscriber paywall.

Mayfield, D. L. “Are You a Religious Fundamentalist?” Healing is My Special Interest. August

23 2022. https://dlmayfield.substack.com/p/are-you-a-religious-fundamentalist.

Mayfield, D. L. “Burnout, in 3 acts.” Healing is My Special Interest. September 13, 2022.

https://dlmayfield.substack.com/p/burnout-in-3-acts This post is locked behind a

subscriber paywall.

Miles, Sara. Take This Bread. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007

Old Saint Paul’s Edinburgh, “Autism, Theology, and Life in the Church.” Streamed live

on February 16, 2022, YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAm1P5F1yzM&t=6437s

Rapley, Stewart. Autistic Thinking in the Life of the Church. London: SCM Press, 2021.

Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ. New York: Convergent Books, 2019

Romero, Oscar. The Violence of Love. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Translated by James

R. Brockman.

Tonstad, Linn. Queer Theology. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018.