Dr. Mary E. Hunt

Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns.

Dr. Hunt received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California (1980). She also received the Masters in Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (1979) and the Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1974). Her undergraduate degree in Theology and Philosophy is from Marquette University (1972). She completed Clinical Pastoral Education and is fluent in Spanish. She spent several years teaching and working on women's issues and human rights in Argentina as a participant in the Frontier Internship in Mission Program. She continues that work through WATER's project, "Women Crossing Worlds," an ongoing exchange with Latin American women.

Dr. Hunt was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Georgetown University for five years. She has lectured and taught at numerous institutions. For the 2000-2001 academic year she was a Research Fellow at Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. She has taught online and in summer programs at Iliff School of Theology and Pacific School of Religion, and in the summer at Lancaster Theological Seminary. She teaches periodically at the Evangelical Theological Seminary (SET) in Matanzas, Cuba.

She is the editor of A Guide for Women in Religion: Making Your Way from A to Z (Palgrave, 2004) and a co-editor (with Kecia Ali and Monique Moultrie) of the revised version (2014) She is a co-editor, with Patricia Beattie Jung and Radhika Balakrishnan, of Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions (Rutgers University Press, 2001). She is the author of Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), which was awarded the Crossroad Women's Studies Prize. She edited From Woman-Pain to Woman-Vision: Writings in Feminist Theology (Fortress Press, 1989) by Anne McGrew Bennett. She edited La sfida del femminismo alla teologia.The Challenge of Feminism to Theology, with Rosino Gibellini, (Queriniana,1980).

Among her many publications are articles in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Concilium, Conscience, ReligionDispatches.org, and Mandragora. She has published chapters in books such as Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe (ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim), PopeFrancis in Postcolonial Reality: Complexities, Ambiguities, & Paradoxes. (ed. Nicolas Panotto), “Feminism and Religion in the 21^st Century: Technology, Dialogue, and Expanding Borders (ed. Gina Messina-Dysert and Rosemary Radford Ruether), Querida Ivone: Amorosas Cartas de Teologia & Feminismo,( Ed. Nancy Cardoso e Claudio Carvalhaes), Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms (ed. Kathleen T. Talvacchia, Michael F. Pettinger, and Mark Larrimore), “Women, Sex, and Religion,” with Patricia Beattie Jung, Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, (ed. David A. Leeming, Kathryn Madden, and Stanton Marlan),The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice,  (ed. Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess), Queer Religion: LGBT Movements and Queering Religion, Volume 2, (ed. Donald Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson). New Feminist Christianity, (ed. Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu), Feminist Theologies: Legacy and Prospect (ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether), Heterosexism in Contemporary World Religion: Problem and Prospect (ed. Marvin M. Ellison and Judith Plaskow), God Forbid (ed. Kathleen Sands), Sexuality and the Sacred (ed. James Nelson and Sandra Longfellow), Feminist Theological Ethics (ed. Lois Daly), Sexual Diversity and Catholicism (ed. Patricia Beattie Jung), and Women’s Voices and Visions of the Church: Reflections from North America (ed. Letty M. Russell, Aruna Gnanadason, and J. Shannon Clarkson), as well as entries in the Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America (ed. Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether).

Mary is a member of the Society for Christian Ethics and the American Academy of Religion where she co-chaired the Women and Religion Section. She is an advisor to the Women's Ordination Conference. She is a member of the Editorial Board of I.B. Taurus. Mary is active in the Women-Church Convergence and through WATER participates in the National Religious Leadership Roundtable.

She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her partner, Diann L. Neu, and their daughter, Catherine Fei Min Hunt-Neu.

(This revised biographical profile provided by Mary E. Hunt, 2017)

Biography Date: August, 2002; rev. 2017

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