Elizabeth M. Bounds

Dr. Elizabeth M. Bounds, who joined Candler’s faculty in 1997, is engaged in the Justice, Peacebuilding, and Conflict Transformation (JPACT) concentration, part of the Master of Divinity degree program at Candler. She also teaches courses as part of the Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding concentration in Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion.

The core of Bounds’ work is focused on moral and theological responses to conflict and violence, whether in the U.S. prison system, ordinary congregational life, or post-conflict situations. She engages questions of restorative justice and the U.S. criminal justice system, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, democratic practices and civil society, working with a variety of participatory and practical methods.

She is the author of Coming Together/Coming Apart: Religion, Modernity, and Community (Routledge, 1997), co-editor of Welfare Policy: Feminist Critiques and Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics (Pilgrim Press, 1999) and has authored several essays in edited volumes.

Bounds’ current research studies theo-moral understandings of the good life among incarcerated women. She is co-founder/administrator of the Certificate in Theological Studies at Arrendale State Prison for Women.

BOOKS

Co-editor, Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004

Coming Together/Coming Apart: Religion, Community and Modernity, Routledge, 1997

CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES

“Wasting Human Lives: A Christian Response to Hyper- Incarceration in the United States,” in Markets and Morals: Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality,

Co-author, “Treating Moral Harms as Social Harms: Toward a Restorative Ethics of Christian Responsibility,” in Journal of Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 37, no. 2, 2017

“The Conflict Skills Classroom as Social Microcosm,” in Conflict Transformation and Religion: Essays on Faith, Power, and Relationship, Palgrave Macmillan, September 01, 2016

“Opening My Eyes: Teaching in a Women’s Prison,” in Religious Studies News, American Academy of Religion, May 31, 2016

“Criminal Justice and Christian Community,” in Political Theology, vol. 16, no. 3, Maney, May 01, 2016

“Round Table Discussion: William F. May, Testing the National Covenant: Some Thoughts in Response,” in Political Theology, vol. 15, no. 3, Maney, May 01, 2014

“Holistic Character Ethics: An Ethics for a Social Gospel?” in Ethics as if Jesus Mattered: Essays in Honor of Glen H. Stassen, Smyth & Helwys Publishing, January 01, 2014

“Are We Productive Yet?” in Religious Studies News, American Academy of Religion, October 10, 2010

Co-author, “‘We Will See Many Miracles’: Religion, Globalization, and the International Community School,” in Religion in Global Civil Society, Oxford University Press, January 01, 2004

Co-editor, “Welfare as a Family Value: Conflicting Notions of Family in Protestant Welfare Responses,” in Welfare Policy: Feminist Critiques, Wipf and Stock, January 01, 1999

Center for Women at Emory Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogy Award, 2023

Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Emory University, 2021

Candler Faculty Grant for Research and for Training, Emory University, 2015-2016

Senior Fellow, Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Emory University, 2014-2015

Unitas Distinguished Alumni/ae Award, Union Theological Seminary

Provost’s Program in Manuscript Development, Emory University, 2003-2004

Outstanding Service-Learning Educator, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Summer Faculty Fellow, Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Diggs Teaching Scholar Award, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

AAR/Lilly/NEH Grant for Workshop on Teaching Religion in the American South, 1995-1996

Daniel Day Williams Award, Union Theological Seminary

Union Scholarship, 1983-1988

Introduction to Christian Ethics

Introduction to Church and Community

Justice, Crime, and Punishment

Problems in Christian Social Ethics—Engaging Moral Lifeworlds

Restorative Justice

Skills in Conflict Transformation

Theology and Ethics of Reconciliation

Understanding Community