Kim Penner, PhD
Adjunct Faculty
About Kim
Kim is a scholar of theological ethics and a full-time pastor at Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ontario. Her work is shaped by her experience of growing up in a peace-church tradition that often failed to notice how peace is negotiated and performed in sexual/sexualized and gendered (as well as other socially located) ways.
For Kim, understandings of God, the church, morality, and the body are highly contextual and shaped by intersecting relationships of power. Two of her guiding questions are: how is power (both interpersonal and social systemic) functioning to oppress? And what do life-giving relationships of power look and feel like, especially according to those who have been disempowered?
Kim’s current work focuses on social and theological understandings of desire; liberative sexual ethics in a multi-faith context; institutional cultures of abuse; and ways to incorporate queer theory and theology into the life of the church.
In Semester Two of 2023鈥�24, Kim is teaching HTE663E Sexuality, Colonialism and Queer Theology.
Scholarship
Doctoral dissertation: 鈥淒iscipleship as Erotic Peacemaking: Toward a Feminist Mennonite Theo-ethics of Embodiment and Sexuality鈥� (supervisor: Dr. Marilyn Legge)
Master’s thesis: 鈥淭he Work of Wealthy Women: Female Discipleship in Luke 8:1-3鈥� (supervisor: Dr. Tom Yoder Neufeld)
(See Kim’s CV near her degrees above for the complete list)