Donna Bowman utilizes the work of process thinker Alfred North Whitehead to develop a doctrine of election that dialogues with the view of Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Taking seriously Barth's contention that election is the best of all words that can be spoken about God, Bowman reinterprets Whitehead's description of God's provision of the initial aim to each entity as the central cosmological and theological fact of universal election. By combining Barth's concerns with process categories, she concludes that both systems are aimed at common theological and philosophical enemies.
Donna Bowman is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas. Her training in philosophical theology and religious studies has led to a scholarly career focused on process theology and Reformed theology, especially the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Karl Barth. Since 2007, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Religion.
Donna's current research investigates the theological underpinnings and manifestations of the Prayer Shawl Ministry movement, with a larger constructive project on the theology of domesticity also in the works. She is an active critic of popular culture, publishing as a contributing writer on The A.V. Club. Her interdisciplinary teaching draws from these diverse competencies, encompassing courses on popular and material culture and their theological intersections. She frequently delivers presentations on technologically-enabled pedagogies at regional and national conferences.
In and out of the classroom, Donna is an avid knitter and participant in social media. Along with her husband, a freelance writer and widely respected critic of popular culture, and her two children, she embraces the Southern life to which she was born and bred.
