Writing Projects in Progress

Freedom For — Freedom is highly valued in the United States. Despite our familiarity with the term freedom and the frequency of its use in public discourse, freedom is a potent word and is accompanied by some dangers. Particularly when assumptions are made that US residents share a common understanding of what it means to be personally free and the type of social, political, economic, ecclesial, and environmental conditions necessary to secure our freedom. In the US as is true in many nations around the world today, there is a widely perceived problem of the tension between the expression of individual freedom in our society and in the churches and what it means to experience belonging to a larger community. My work in this area examines competing concepts of freedom that are the heart of the US culture wars and considers the distinctive notion of Christian freedom as freedom for.

Most Recent Book Projects

During 2019, I began working on a new book entitled Dutiful Love: Empowering Individuals and Families Affected by Serious Mental Illness. This book was published and released in August of 2021. You can find it on Amazon.com or order it directly from Fortress Press as well as other websites.

What is this project about?

Dutiful Love and Mental Health addresses a major contemporary U.S. problem neglected by scholars of theology and religious leaders within congregations and fill a significant gap in the literature focusing on the intersection of theology, disability studies, and mental illness.

There are four main goals to the project:  

• to share stories about how mental illness impacts a larger family system, particularly siblings;

• to discuss and analyze Christian ideas informing care for people with mental illness within a larger family system;

• to draw upon empirical data and examine the context for care in the US and explore how the financial and caregiving burden is placed upon individual families;

• and, to develop a constructive and liberating theological response to mental illness from a progressive feminist theological perspective.

Many thanks to the Louisville Institute for their support for this project.

Video Projects

I recently produced a video series in collaboration with Theocademy and Racial Equity and Women’s Intercultural Ministries of the PCUSA intended to provide new educational resources for study in the PCUSA and other denominations. The series entitled “Expanding the Narrative: Women and the Reformation” discusses women, gender, movements for reform, and a variety of contextual theologies and is intended to foster honest dialogue regarding gender discrimination and biases within the Reformed theological tradition. This series emerged out of a larger research project assessing the status of women on all levels of the PCUSA that incorporated both a sociological study, resulting in the Gender and Leadership Report (2016), and a theological consultation (held at McCormick Theological Seminary in 2016). 

You can find the video series by following this link: http://www.theocademy.com/expanding-the-narrative-women-and-the-reformation

If you are interested in a presentation related to this series or more information please contact me at ehinsonhasty@bellarmine.edu