Rhiannon Grant is Woodbrooke’s Deputy Programme Leader for Research and Programme Coordinator for Modern Quaker Thought. Rhiannon’s work at Woodbrooke spans academic and practice-based approaches to Quakerism. She teaches in Woodbrooke’s short course program and supervises research and teaches postgraduate students within the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies. Outside Woodbrooke, she researches and writes about Quakers for both academic and general audiences.

Her interests centre on British Quakerism in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, especially Quaker theology, ways of speaking about God, and the developments in practice and religious diversity. For example, she has worked on Quaker lists of words for God, ‘afterwords’ and other practices at the end of meeting for worship, Liberal Quaker books of discipline or faith and practice and their theology, what happens when meeting for worship is held online, and how the British Quaker community incorporates nontheism, spiritual insights from Christianity and other religions, and dual and other complex religious identities.

Qualifications

Rhiannon’s undergraduate degree was Philosophy and Theology (University of Nottingham). She followed this with an MA in Gender, Sexuality and Queer Theory at the University of Leeds, where she stayed to write a PhD entitled ‘Wittgensteinian investigations of contemporary Quaker religious language’, (http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/7825/) supervised by Rachel Muers and Mikel Burley.

She can be contacted at rhiannon.grant@woodbrooke.org.uk

Current Research

Her current research project is on multiple religious belonging, and she also teaches and supervises on a range of other topics including philosophy of religion, gender and sexuality, Quaker spiritual practices, and formal processes within the Quaker community. By approaching Quakerism from both an insider perspective, as a member of a Quaker meeting, and a scholarly perspective, in which empirical evidence and rigour are prized, she intends her work to express a deep appreciation of the complexity and richness of the tradition while also understanding it as one religious community among many.

Publications

Books

• 2021 Hearing the Light: The core of Quaker theology, Christian Alternative Books, https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/christian-alternative-books/our-books/quaker-quicks-hearing-light
  An accessible book about Quaker theology based on the same research as 2020’s Theology from Listening.
• 2020 Quakers Do What! Why?, Christian Alternative Books, https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/christian-alternative-books/our-books/quaker-quicks-quakers-do-what-why
  An introduction to Quaker practice using a lively question and answer format.
• 2020 Theology from Listening: Finding the Core of Liberal Quaker Theological Thought, Brill, https://brill.com/view/title/57240
  A scholarly assessment of Liberal Quaker theology in the 20^th and early 21^st centuries covering books of faith and practice, individual writers, and theologians.
• 2019 Telling the Truth about God, Christian Alternative Books, https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/christian-alternative-books/our-books/quaker-quicks-telling-truth-about-god
  An introduction for general readers to the Quaker approach to talking about the divine, based on the same research as 2018’s British Quakers and Religious Language.
• 2018 British Quakers and Religious Language, Brill, https://brill.com/view/book/9789004379145/BP000007.xml
  An academic analysis of various ways British Quakers talk about God, based on research conducted for my PhD.

Refereed journal articles

• 2018 “After Same-Sex Marriage: Emerging Quaker Perspectives on Further Questions About Sexuality and Gender”, Quaker Religious Thought, Volume 130, pp. 16-23 https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt/vol130/iss1/3/
• 2018 “Using multiple religious belonging to test analogies for religion”, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, Volume 79 Issue 4, https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2017.1393769
• 2018 “Ritual with a Little Interaction and Grammar with a Small Vocabulary: Exploring ‘Afterwords’ with Collins and Lindbeck”, Quaker Studies, Volume 23 Issue 1, pp. 67–81 https://doi.org/10.3828/quaker.2018.23.1.5
• 2017 “Playing many religion-games: a Wittgensteinian approach to multiple religious belonging”, Open Theology, https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2017.3.issue-1/opth-2017-0001/opth-2017-0001.xml
• 2015 “Being Fluent in Two Religions”, Journal of the Sociology and Theory of Religion, Volume 1, http://sociologia.palencia.uva.es/revista/index.php/religion/article/view/55
• 2015 “Understanding Quaker Religious Language in its Community Context”, Quaker Studies, Volume 19 Issue 2, pp.260-276
• 2014 “Teaching Religion as a Language”, Journal of Adult Theological Education, Volume 10 Issue 2, pp.92-101
• 2012 “Feminists Borrowing Language and Practice from Other Religious Traditions: Some Ethical Implications”, Feminist Theology, Volume 20 Issue 2, pp.146-15

Co-authored with Rachel Muers

• 2017 “Documentary Theology: Testing a New Approach to Texts in Religious Communities”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 86, Issue 3, September 2018, Pages 616–641, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfx041
• 2017 “Theology at Thresholds: Learning From A Practice ‘In Between’”, Ecclesial Practices, Volume 4 Issue 1, 45-62
• 2016 “At the Threshold of Community: Exploring Quaker Decision-Making Processes”, Faith and Freedom, Volume 69 Issue 1, 3-13

Research notes

Co-authored with Ian Toombs

• 2020 “‘Nones’ Belonging: Sunday Assemblies, Cathedrals, and Quakers”, Quaker Studies, https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/article/60280/

Edited special issues

• 2019 Religions, special issue on ‘Interdisciplinary Quaker Studies’: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/quaker

Book chapters

• 2019 “Multiple Religious Belonging in Wittgensteinian Perspective” in Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein, eds. Gorazd Andrejc and Daniel H. Weiss, Brill
• 2019 “Doctrine and Fanon: George Lindbeck, Han’s Gun and Sherlock’s Big Gay Wedding” in The Sacred in Fantastic Fandom: Essays on the Intersection of Religion and Pop Culture, eds. Carole M. Cusack, John W. Morehead, and Venetia Laura Delano Robertson, McFarland
• 2017 “Breaking Sixteen Walls: Deadpool as Philosopher and Sociologist” in Deadpool and Philosophy, eds. Nicolas Michaud and Jacob May, Open Court

Magazine articles

• • • December 2021 ‘The Quaker Vocabulary of Tomorrow’, Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/the-quaker-vocabulary-of-tomorrow/
    • November 2021 ‘What a Minute Could Do’, Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/what-a-minute-could-do/
    • June 2020 ‘Are You Playing Your Religion-games By Quaker Rules?’, Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/are-you-playing-your-religion-games-by-quaker-rules/
    • March 2020 ‘Uncertainty: an Unnamed Quaker Creed?’, Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/uncertainty-an-unnamed-quaker-creed/
    • March 2020 ‘A bodged object might not look quite the way it would if it had been professionally repaired’, The Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/a-bodged-object-might-not-look-quite-the-way-it-would-if-it-had-been-profes
    • September 2019 ‘The Divine is like water’, The Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/the-divine-is-like-water-tangible-but-hard-to-catch
    • August 2019 ‘God is already within us’, The Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/god-is-already-within-us-part-of-the-natural-world-as-much-as-our-bodies
    • December 2018 ‘A Consideration of Metaphor’, Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/quaker-metaphors/
    • November 2018 ‘Being true to myself’, the Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/being-true-to-myself
    • July 2018 ‘William Penn: Spanning boundaries’, the Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/william-penn-spanning-boundaries
    • April 2015 ‘The Book of Discipline’, the Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/the-book-of-discipline
    • July 2014 ‘Naming the mystery’, the Friend, https://thefriend.org/article/naming-the-mystery

Blog

Brigid, Fox and Buddha, http://brigidfoxandbuddha.wordpress.com