Heidi Hadsell
Since I first read Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition in graduate school, it has helped me to think about the role and tasks of the political arena in human social life. This book also has helped me to think about the relationship between the ethical and the political. It is a book that may be enjoyed simply for the clarity and beauty with which it is written. When I was at Union Theological Seminary, I took a course with Rubem Alves, a Brazilian theologian, right after he had finished his book, A Theology of Human Hope. The combination of the course and then the book were powerful for me and taught me essential things I have never forgotten about, for example, the relationships between ideology and theology and both the power and limitations of the Protestant imagination. Recently I enjoyed Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, a simple story, a novel, that is at the same time both entertaining and profound. A major theme of the book is human community.
Contact Info
77 Sherman Street
Hartford, CT 06105 USA
Telephone: 860/509-9502
Fax: 860-509-9509
Email: hadsell@hartsem.edu
Visit Dr. Hadsell's Website
The Center for Faith in Practice Website
Bio and Interests
Dr. Heidi Hadsell was named President of Hartford Seminary in 2000. She came to the Seminary from the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches, Bossey, Switzerland, where she served as Director since 1997.
Dr. Hadsell has extensive experience in interfaith and international settings. She taught at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil; the University of Southern California; and the Ecumenical Institute in Switzerland before joining the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, as Assistant Professor of Social Ethics in 1989.
At McCormick, she became Dean in 1993 and Professor of Social Ethics in 1994.
Dr. Hadsell is a member of the Board of Globethics.net, based in Switzerland; she serves as a member of the Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children for the Global Network of Religions for Children, Arigatou Foundation; and she is a member of the International Resource Panel for the Islamic Council of Singapore (MUIS). Dr. Hadsell is a member of the Dialogue for Women, co-sponsored by the World Council of Churches and the Interfaith Council of Tehran, which began in 2007.
Dr. Hadsell has worked as a consultant to the dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and also has worked with Plowshares Institute, which is based in Simsbury, CT, in its pilot immersion project for the globalization of theological education.
She has published on a variety of subjects, including ecumenism, environmental ethics, religion in Brazil, and ethics in a religiously plural world.
Online Articles
Cosmopolitan Christianity
An address at the UCC Annual Conference, October 20, 2006
Internal Security and Civil Liberties: Moral Dilemmas and Debates
Chapter twelve from the book September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences
Politics of Responsibility and Responsibility of Politics:
A Perspective of Political Ethics on Presidential Election in the USA
From Responsible Leadership. Global Perspectives, edited by Christoph Stückelberger and J.N.K. Mugambi, Acton Publishers, 2005
For the Sake of the Neighbor, For the Sake of the World
In Stewardship of Public Life, Biblical and Theological Perspectives,Presbyterian Church USA, December 2001
Courses Taught
