Elizabeth Freese

Dr. Elizabeth M. Freese is a scholar-activist working as a Research and Education Consultant with several organizations focused on religion and reproductive justice - SACReD (Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity), RCRC (Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice), and Auburn Seminary. She also teaches in Religion and Society at Drew University Theological School and contributes to public understanding of religious issues underlying the politics of reproduction. The latter includes essays featured in Salon, Religious Dispatches, and Vanderbilt Divinity’s Interventions forum as well as webinar panel participation with Drew University’s Forum on Religion and Global Heath, Women’s March, and Vanderbilt Divinity Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. 

Freese’s broader scholarship advances a critique of societal moral ideologies of re/production and parallel patterns in Christian narrative and liturgy, with an eye toward feminist religious re-formations. She is currently working on her first book One Ideology to Rule Them All: The Re/Productivity Ethic and the Spirit of Extractivism.

Freese previously taught Sociology at the College of NJ and Women’s Studies at Kean University, and she served as an Editorial Assistant with both the Journal and Books divisions of Feminist Studies in Religion. She earned a PhD in Religion and Society at Drew University, a MA in Religion at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, a MA in Communications at the University of AR, and a BA in Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.