GTU Voices - 2024 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer | Dr. Rita D. Sherma

Dr. Rita D. Sherma serves as the founding Director of the GTU’s Center for Dharma Studies, GTU Core Doctoral Faculty, and Co-Chair of GTU Sustainability 360—an interreligious environmental humanities initiative. She's held leadership roles as Vice President of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies and as Founding Vice President of the Dharma Academy of North America. Additionally, she founded the Hinduism Program Unit at the American Academy of Religion. Over her career, she has organized more than twenty international conferences spanning Sustainability Studies, Religion & Integrative Medicine, Contemplative Studies, and Religious Studies. 

GTU: Congratulations on being awarded the 2024 Distinguished Faculty Lecture! Could you share with us a bit about the topic you'll be addressing and why it's significant in today's academic and societal context? 

Rita Sherma (RS): Thank you for the kind words. I will be addressing the entanglement of religious life and the natural world, an issue that is at the core of my academic and spiritual life. This nexus can be referred to as “theology and sustainability.” It is significant because it comprises a wide range of sub-disciplines, bringing theology and theoethics into conversation with (1) economic justice; (2) the climate crisis; (3) environmental-racial-class justice; (4) animal ethics; (5) gender & ecology; and (6) the natural sciences. Solution-oriented theopraxis includes advocacy for rewilding, ecosystemic restoration, and providing care for climate trauma through ecopsychology.  

As I explained in my interview by Conversation magazine, this “is an orientation to God, the divine, or supreme reality, that is grounded in our experience of life on planet Earth. It respects the miracle of life on this planet and recognizes our relationship with it. Such a spirituality can have God or the divine as the focus…. while it encourages a contemplative and harmonious relationship to the Earth. Green spirituality seeks to harness the spiritual traditions of the world to energize the effort to restore planetary ecosystems and stop future harms.” This crisis is unparalleled because it can, and is, destroying innumerable species of life on Earth and endangering the survival of humanity. The power and potential that lies with the folds of religious traditions is unlike any other and can catalyze human transformation beyond anything that terrifying scientific data can do.  

In my recent edited volume, Religion & Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses, I write: “Planetary survival is now predicated upon the alignment of our notions of both human and ecological rights with our highest principles. As such, ways of knowing that are embedded in religion, philosophy, spiritual ethics, moral traditions, and a culture that values the community and the commons – as an essential resource for the transformation necessary for environmental regeneration and renewal – are indispensable.” 

GTU: It sounds like your lecture will be a timely addition to the conversation on religion and environmental sustainability. We can’t wait to hear it! Could you share some thoughts about what this recognition means to you personally and professionally, and how this lecture will reflect your academic passions and contributions? 

RS: What does this recognition mean to me personally? It fulfills a sense of belonging. I have always felt most at home among theologians of all religions who use the hermeneutics of faith and justice to understand our responsibility to the Divine and to the world. This conceptual space has been far more meaningful than the perspective of researchers who solely apply the lens of suspicion to problematize every religious phenomenon. This moment justifies my sense of belonging here, to a theological community. 

What does this recognition mean to me professionally? The renowned Catholic, liberative, ecofeminist theologian, Dr. Rosemary Ruether was my mentor. She served on my MA thesis committee on ecological praxis at Claremont Graduate University. Many GTU faculty and alumni know that after retiring from her position as Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Rosemary Ruether served as Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology here at the GTU (2000 – 2005). Once I started my doctoral work, she strongly encouraged me to write my dissertation as “the full expression” of a critical ecofeminist theology from the Hindu tradition. But I couldn’t speak for a billion people. So, she suggested that I write from my theological lineage, which is profoundly focused on divine immanence and is a natural fit for ecospiritual thought and praxis. I did as she suggested. Today, my most recent book will present the “full expression” of ecofeminist theology that she encouraged me to write. With this recognition, my professional work and theological reflection come full circle, as it was catalyzed by Rosemary Ruether in CGU and has been completed at GTU—her final place of work.  

GTU: And through your work as the founding Director of the Center for Dharma Studies at the GTU, you've played a pivotal role in advancing the understanding of Dharmic traditions within academic and broader contexts. How do you see the study of the Dharmic traditions evolving in the coming years, and what role do you envision the CDS and GTU playing in this evolution? 

RS: January 2025 will be the tenth anniversary of the Center for Dharma Studies. When I was recruited as the founding director of this new initiative, there were no other institutions that offered the curricula that we have pioneered. The need for these foci is evidenced by continuing interest, nationally and internationally, for our PhD and MA offerings. CDS was also the first in many other areas. In some ways, there was continuity with the work I had started at the AAR with the establishment of the Hinduism Program Unit in the late 1990s when I was an MA student, the organization of the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM) with twenty-two years of concurrent conferences at the AAR/SBL, the publication of the Journal of Dharma Studies through CDS, and other initiatives. In 2023, the South Asia Studies Association, a major US research association, recognized this work with the Exemplar Award which recognizes academic scholarship and leadership. But in many ways, we were able to initiate new research and curricula that was in harmony with the GTU. That meant that we could look at big picture issues such as theology and sustainability, contemplative epistemology, and our new initiative in theology and medicine. All of these have also had interreligious components. GTU’s CDS has already contributed significantly to the study and practice of critical theology in these new American traditions, and we will continue to assimilate these ancient streams of thought and wisdom in a way that contributes to the strength, unity, and integrity of the American tapestry.  

GTU: In addition to being the Director of CDS, your work spans interdisciplinary and interreligious studies, particularly evident in your role as Co-Chair of GTU's Sustainability 360 initiative. How do you see the intersection of religion and sustainability shaping the discourse in academia and beyond, and what role do you believe institutions like GTU play in fostering this dialogue? 

RS: Religion and Sustainability is a critically important discipline because it addresses the greatest threat to human and planetary survival. It is, by its very nature, interdisciplinary—where many disciplines come together to transcend boundaries and find collaborative solutions. But it also needs to see itself as interreligious because the problem spans the globe, and the crisis cuts across all religious cultures. While some others have produced research that is “multireligious,” the GTU’s Sustainability 360, which I co-lead with my friend and colleague, Dr. Devin Zuber, recognized from its inception the necessity for religions to be informed and inspired by the work that other traditions are doing in this critical area. GTU has remarkable faculty with varied skill sets and rich, complex, research backgrounds that can contribute to the inter- and trans-disciplinary imperative towards ecological justice, care, resilience, and restoration.  

GTU: Your forthcoming monograph,  Radical Divine Immanence: An Emancipatory, Ecofeminist, Hindu Ecological Theology of Shakti, promises to contribute significantly to the discourse on Hindu ecological theology. Could you provide us with a glimpse into the key themes and arguments of your upcoming work, and how you believe it will contribute to ongoing conversations within both academia and wider society? 

RS: The Hindu theological paradigm is conceptually rich and epistemologically based on contemplative study, meditation on sacred texts, philosophical vision, and worship. There are various types of hermeneutics and theological schools that may use philosophical, devotional, mystical, esoteric, and narrative approaches. The most structured and systematic of these are the philosophical schools (Vedanta denominations). Often, theological lineages give primacy to one of these approaches. Other elements are secondary or downplayed. But the theology of the Divine Feminine (Shakti) is complex because it contains all of these layers without a clear emphasis on a hermeneutical approach. As a result, the theology of Shakti becomes submerged, and praxis devolves into fasts, feasts, festivals, and esoterica. Yet, this is a theological view that is strongly based on philosophical concepts, cosmology, and epistemic principles, as well as a strong narrative theology of justice. My work is focused on the retrieval and application of the submerged philosophical tradition that anchors this theology to dynamic creative presence. This is a vision of the Divine who is pervasive as bio-potentiality in the heart of matter; as divine telos in the life of the Earth; as consciousness in the human spirit, and dynamism in the embodiment of sentient beings. Yet this is a Divinity that is fully eternal and transcendent. This dual perspective allows for a robust and comprehensive theology. But more importantly, from the perspective of ecotheology, the natural world and our bodies are immersed in sacred immanence which is an emanation of a transcendent Divine. Justice is the flavor of God’s love, and each moment of experience is integrated into the inner life of the Divine. This work contributes to ecological, liberative, ecofeminist, comparative theology, and the theoethics of ecology. It advances and offers a hermeneutic of divine immanence which is distinct from the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and stands in contradistinction to ideals of pure immanence.