Fourth Sunday of Advent - Luke 1:39-45 - Leaping with Joy: Celebrating Divine Energies Embodied.

Rena MacLeod is a biblical scholar who researches and writes in the areas of violent biblical narratives, mimetic theory, and feminist theory. Her research draws out the shared space between women’s contemporary experience of men’s violence, and those experiences reflected in biblical texts of female victimhood. Integral to this scholarship, is also analysing the roles and representations of women’s courage, strength, and empowerment. Rena is especially interested in how these biblical representations of women’s experiences may be read as destabilising the discourses and myths that sustain structures of gendered violence. Ultimately grounded in a biblical liberation framework, Rena’s research seeks to foster flourishing personhood and a society free from the dynamics of violent behaviour.