PAMELA SUE ANDERSON – WITNESS TO THE GOSPEL, PROPHET TO THE CHURCH

Abstract

Pamela had, throughout her life, an ambivalent relationship with the church. She wanted her work to make a difference to it and she was committed to being a feminist philosopher of religion. There are many recurrent themes in her work that clearly relate to her background in the church, and particularly in the Lutheran church of her upbringing. Her challenge to the patriarchy of what she called “hyper-traditional” Christianity is clear, but also her critique of some forms of forgiveness and her search for new understandings of love and vulnerability. Her work presents significant challenges to the church, but does not abandon it, instead offering new ways of connecting with some of its most profound and important teachings and themes. Her work encourages us women in the church to value our own life experience as a source of knowledge, to re-frame our vulnerabilities and to find love in ways that offer freedom and hope. Pamela saw her work as her own contribution to the community of the church. It remains important that her voice, even and especially with its “speaker vulnerability,” is heard in that place.

Keywords:

• church
• love
• Lutheran
• forgiveness

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005.

2 Pamela Sue Anderson, “‘A Thoughtful Love of Life’: A Spiritual Turn in Philosophy of Religion,” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 85 (2009): 119–29.

3 Pamela Sue Anderson, “Creating a New Imaginary for Love in Religion,” ed. Paul S. Fiddes, in Love and Vulnerability: Thinking with Pamela Sue Anderson, ed. Pelagia Goulimari, Spec. issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 25.1–2 (2020): 51. The phrase “being undone,” as Pamela acknowledges, comes from the work of Judith Butler.

4 “‘A Thoughtful Love of Life’” 129.

5 University Sermon, 3 March 2003.

6 “Morning Glory, Starlit Sky” in Rejoice and Sing (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991), hymn number 99. Reproduced by permission of the copyright holder, Maureen Smith.

7 London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977.