Joyce Mercer

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Joyce Ann Mercer’s work focuses on practices of care in diverse contexts and situations, including trauma and moral injury, church conflict, children and climate justice, post-conflict areas of southeast Asia, children in the consumer culture of the US, addictions in family systems, and the religious lives of adolescent girls. The practical theological thread running throughout her work is the fostering of liberatory hope where personal and social forms of suffering limit human flourishing. Professor Mercer’s current book project with Oxford University Press is based on a congregational study of churches in conflict with their denominations over sexuality. She recently has published several articles and book chapters chapters from research focused on children and climate anxiety. Prof. Mercer edited Conundrums in Practical Theology (Brill, 2016) with co-editor Bonnie Miller-McLemore for Brill’s practical theology book series, “Theology in Practice”. Earlier works include Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood (Chalice Press), a feminist practical theological exploration of theological meanings of childhood in the context of U.S. consumer culture; Girl Talk God Talk: Why Faith Matters to Teenage Girls and Their Parents (Jossey Bass), addressing the experiences of adolescent girls constructing gender and faith identities amid the complexities of adolescence; and, Lives to Offer: Accompanying Youth on their Vocational Quests  (Pilgrim, co-authored with Dori Baker).

Professor Mercer joined the YDS faculty in January 2016, following ten years at Virginia Theological Seminary as the Arthur Lee Kinsolving Chair in Pastoral and Practical Theology. She also has served on faculties at the Graduate Theological Union, and Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines. Her career includes positions in chaplaincy and clinical social work in Atlanta, St. Paul, and Minneapolis. She maintains her professional standing in the field of social work as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Professor Mercer, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, remains active in parish ministry, most recently as a parish associate for pastoral care with older adults. She edits the international scholarly journal Religious Education and is a past president of the Association of Practical Theology. She has served as co-chair of the steering committee of the Practical Theology Group in the American Academy of Religion and is on the board of the Religious Education Association. Professor Mercer is a member of the International Academy of Practical Theology.

Books and Selected Publications:

“What Children Know: Children, Climate Change, and Epistemic Injustice.” Pastoral Psychology. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01146-7

“Children and Climate Anxiety: An Ecofeminist Practical Theological Perspective,” ch. 16 p. 183-197 in Practical Theology Amid Environmental Crisis, McCarroll, Pamela R. and Hye Ran Kim-Cragg, eds. (Basel, Switzerland: MDPI), 2023. Also in Religions 2022, Vol 13:4, 302-320. 

“Spiritual Care for Survivors of Church-Related Sexual Abuse: Making the Case for Moral Injury,” in Sexualisierte Gewalt in Kirchlichen Kontexten/Sexual Violence in Church Contexts, ed. Mathias Wirth, Isabelle Noth, Silvia Schroer (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter), 2022.

“Writing Transformations: Using Addiction Recovery Memoirs Toward Personal and Social Change,” in Aluli Vahakangas, Sivert Angel, and Kirstiine Helboe Johansen, eds., Reforming Practical Theology: The Politics of Body and Space, International Academy of Practical Theology Conference Series, Vol. 1, 2019, pp. 69-75. 

“Environmental Activism in the Philippines: A Practical Theological Perspective,” Chapter 16 pp.  287-307, in Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster, eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2017.

“Communal Identities and Collective Trauma: A Practical Theological Exploration into Indonesia’s 1965-67 Anti-Communist Massacre,” pp. 192-203 in Practicing Ubuntu: Practical Theological Perspectives on Injustice, Personhood and Human Dignity. Olehile A. Buffel, Jaco Dreyer, Yolanda Dreyer, and Malan Nel, eds. (Leiden: LIT Verlag), 2017.

Conundrums in Practical Theology (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill). Joyce Ann Mercer and Bonnie Miller-McLemore (Eds.). In Theology in Practice Series, in press, November 2016.

Girl Talk, God Talk: Why Faith Matters to Adolescent Girls—and their Parents, (San Francisco: Jossey Bass), 2008.

Lives to Offer: Accompanying Youth on Their Vocational Quests, co-authored with Dori Baker. (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press), 2007.

Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press), 2005.