Laurel C. Schneider

Laurel C. Schneider joined the faculty of Boston University School of Theology in 2024. Trained as a constructive theologian at Harvard (MA, MDiv) and at Vanderbilt (PhD) she focused her research, writing, and teaching (Colby College, North Central College, Chicago Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University) on Christian queer, feminist, postcolonial and liberation possibilities. A long interest in Indigenous traditions of eastern North America that started in undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College and carried through her career has influenced her work and teaching in theology and philosophy. Theological imagination is grounded in deep cultural assumptions that frame epistemologies, practices, ontologies, and religious hopes. Constructive theology attunes itself to these assumptions, with an eye toward liberation.

Schneider is President-Elect of the American Academy of Religion and member of the Executive Committee of the AAR Board of Directors. In addition to her published books, she has numerous articles and anthology chapters relating to concepts of multiplicity, divinity, sexuality, race, and postcolonial theory and is currently at work on poetics and imagining beyond dystopia/s. Apart from her scholarly work in theology and philosophy, she also serves on the local and district school boards in her home town of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts.

Selected Publications

Queer Soul, Queer Theology: Ethics and Redemption in Real Life, with Thelathia Nikki Young. London: Routledge 2021.

Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity. London: Routledge, 2007.

Re-Imagining the Divine: Confronting the Backlash Against Feminist Theology. Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1999.

Editor with Catherine Keller, Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation, London: Routledge, 2010.

Editor, with Stephen G. Ray, Awake to the Moment: Introducing Constructive Theology, The Workgroup in Constructive Theology. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2016.

“Divine Promiscuity” in Envisioning the Cosmic Body of Christ: Materiality-Incarnation-Ecology” ed. by Aurica Jax and Saskia Wendel. Oxford: Routledge, 2019.

“Nothing In This World Is Indifferent To Us: A Dialogical Reflection on the Queerness of Theology and Science” with Catherine Keller, in Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies” edited by Whitney Bauman and Lisa Stenmark. NY: Lexington, 2017.

“More Than A Feeling: A Queer Notion of Survivance” in Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies, edited by Kent Brintnall and Joseph Marchal. NY: Fordham University Press, 2017.

“The Gravity of Love: Theopoetics and Ontological Imagination” in Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness, ed. by Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal. Fordham University Press, 2013.

“When The World Is Alive, Spirit Is Not Dismembered: Reflections on Native North American (Eastern Woodland) Philosophy” in Sensational Religion: Sense and Contention in Material Practice, Sally Promey, ed. Yale University Press, 2013.

“What Race Is Your Sex?” in Queer Religion: LGBT Movements and Queering Religion, Volume II, ed. by Donald L. Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson (Santa Barbara, CA), 2012.

“The Love We Cannot Not Want” in Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology, ed. by Stephen Moore and Mayra Rivera. New York: Fordham University, 2010.

“Promiscuous Incarnation” in The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity, ed. by Margaret Kamitsuka (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.

“Homosexuality, Queer Theory and Christian Theology” in Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism: A Critical Reader, ed. by Björn Krondorfer. SCM-Canterbury, 2009.