Fragments for Fractured Times

"Preeminent poet-practical theologian Nicola Slee has gathered a beautiful collage of writings filled with wisdom wrestled from life. At once prayerful and scholarly, these essays deepen faith and broaden religious understanding. A stellar contribution to the discipline and an immense gift to wider conversations about theology and the spiritual life." -- Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Vanderbilt University
"Nicola Slee has long been a leading Feminist Practical theologian in the UK, given her undoubted skill in combining feminist theoretocal reflections, with poetry and qualititive, social science based research. 'Fragments for Fractured Times' is the distillation of a lifetime's commitment not only to feminist theology, but also to the lived experience of women and gilrs, in their actuality of living out faith in a messy and complicated world. From our earliest times as fellow doctoral students studying with the late, great Professor John Hull. I witnessed the fierce intelligence and poetic wisdom of Professor Slee's work. For anyone seeking to understand the interface between feminist theologies of liberation, qualiative research and poetic theological reflection, Fragments for Fractured Times is a must read!" -- Anthony G. Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture, Regent's Park College
"This important collection brings together things that long to be together but are too often kept apart. So spirituality reshapes research, liturgy invades the lecture room, desiring is reconciled to conceptualising and the long estrangement of theology from poetics is ended. It takes radical vision, stubborn faith and nurturing love to achieve this miracle. Nicola Slee’s rare gifts enable it to happen." -- Heather Walton, Glasgow University, UK
"Nicola Slee has written a book for such a time as this. Fragments for Fractured Times names the spiritual struggle to live well in the midst of the multiple and overwhelming crises of our day, crises which are at once personal, social, political, and ecological. With honesty and poetry, Slee describes an embodied and engaged spirituality. Pleasure and pain, love and fear, prayer and rest, witness and standing, research and writing, presence and emptiness all become spiritual practices. Here is a feminist practical theologian daring to speak her own truth. As Slee writes of Christa, “She is gathering her power.” Read these fragments slowly, so that they can inspire your own transformative spiritual quest." -- Mary Clark Moschella, Yale University School of Divinity
“Few theologians write so beautifully about brokenness and so faithfully about fragments as Nicola Slee. She has the gift of seeing – landscapes, art, human encounters – and probing their deeper meanings. She hears the voices of the marginalised and understands them to be central to God. She turns the seemingly unspeakable into prophetic poetry. This collection is not some industrially processed theological fastfood. Nicola Slee presents a table full of theological tapas – artisanal, seasonal, and local – to be savoured and inspired.” -- Ruard Ganzevoort, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam