Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology
Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Santa Clara University/Executive Director of the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education
B.A., Yale University (1979)
J.D., University of Virginia School of Law (1982)
M.A., Systematic Theology, Boston College (2003)
Ph.D., Systematic and Comparative Theology, Boston College (2006)
S.T.L., Jesuit School of Theology (2018)
Alison M. Benders joined Santa Clara University in 2014 as Associate Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology. Prior to joining JST, Dr. Benders served as a senior level academic administrator at several Catholic institutions in Ohio, having taught graduate and undergraduate courses for over ten years. Her research interests include race as a social justice issue, moral transformation, and the contributions of Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan. In 2021, she had published America's Original Sin: a pilgrimage of race and grace (Liturgical Press), which is a reflective immersion into our nation's history of racial injustice through personal and theological lenses. She also authored Just Prayer: A Book of Hours for Peacemakers and Justice Seekers (Liturgical Press 2015), which won the Catholic Publishers First Place Book Award for Spirituality in 2016. An upcoming spiritual text, Living Prayer: A Book of Hours for Renewing Creation, the fruit of collaboration between Dr. Benders and Professor Gina Hens-Piazza and Professor Emerita Lisa Fullam, is forthcoming in Summer 2024 from Liturgical Press.
Dr. Benders serves as SCU’s Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Santa Clara University; the division cultivates and celebrates the Jesuit Catholic mission of the university. In this role, she also serves as the Executive Director of the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, one of three Centers of Distinction at Santa Clara University.
- Racism, Theology, and Justice
- Proseminar
- Living Prayer: A Book of Hours for Renewing Creation, Benders, Alison; Fullam, LIsa; Hens-Piazza (Liturgical Press 2024, forthcoming).
- Recollecting America’s Original Sin: A Pilgrimage of Race and Grace (Liturgical Press 2021)
- Reading, Praying, Living The US Bishops' Open Wide Our Hearts: A Faith Formation Guide. (Liturgical Press, 2020)
- "Genetic Moral Enhancement? Yes. Holiness? No." in Fullam, L. and Charles Curran, eds., US Moral Theology from the Margins: Readings in Moral Theology No. 19, Mahway, NJ: Paulist, 2020 (reprint of 2018 article)
- Review "Seeing race again: Countering colorblindness across the disciplines. Crenshaw, KW (Ed.).(2019). Univ of California Press. ISBN: 978-0520300996. $32.95. xviii+ 410." Teaching theology and religion 23.3 (2020): 209-211
- Quilting as Spiritual Practice and the Possibility of Redemption, GTU Doug Adams Gallery, Black Lives Matter Exhibit (Online, 2020)
- Just Prayer: A Book of Hours for Peacemakers and Justice Seekers (Liturgical Press, 2015)