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Elizabeth Anderson

Liza Anderson, PhD has held faculty positions in church history and ascetical theology at Episcopal Divinity School, Claremont School of Theology, and General Theological Seminary. A historical theologian who focuses on monasticism and spirituality, she currently lives in Minnesota, where she shares life with the Roman Catholic sisters of Saint Benedict’s Monastery, works for Luther Seminary, and serves as a member of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music and the Anglican-Oriental Orthodox International Commission.

Between Presumption and Despair: Further Thoughts on the Ordeal of Hope

By Elizabeth Anderson I have written previously about the understanding of hope espoused by many of the monastic writers of Christian late antiquity. Rather than a...

The Ordeal of Hope: Practicing a Virtue Under Unpromising Conditions

By Elizabeth Anderson  The early 21st century presents many of us with a crisis of hope much more than a crisis of faith. There are...

The Beheading of John the Baptist and the (Post-)Traumatic Church

By Elizabeth Anderson The new trial use commemorations approved by the Episcopal Church’s 2018 General Convention include several feasts that are both ancient and widespread,...

The Priesthood of All Believers: The Uses and Abuses of a Doctrine

By Elizabeth Anderson “A lay theologian,” the bishop said with obvious repugnance, “is simply a logical contradiction, which undermines the entire ecclesiology of the Episcopal...

Of Literal Resurrection and Spiritual Communion

By Elizabeth Anderson There are a handful of predictable theological debates that seem to crop up at certain times of the liturgical year. Is purple...

Translating the Trinity

Much of our prayer is already an exercise in translation. We seem to forget in our liturgical debates that even the Scriptures and the Creeds were not revealed to us in English.