Comprised of the wisdom of over fifty scholars, preachers, poets, and artists, this anthology is born of the conviction that open-hearted engagement across our differences is a prerequisite for healthy civic life today. The collection offers inspiration to faith leaders, social-justice activists, and secular readers alike, while simultaneously providing an accessible window onto lived Islam. Taken as a whole, One Nation, Indivisible highlights principles and practices of anti-racism work, and its contributors argue for a robust vision of American pluralism. While most of the contributors reside in the United States, through their stories of encounter, they bring a global perspective and encourage us all, wherever we may be, to find ways of traversing our otherwise isolating enclaves.
The inevitability of death in our broken world means that grief and mourning are a normal part of the human experience. Too often, though, this normal journey of grief is cut short by a culture intent on pretending bad things don't really happen. In A Road Too Short for the Long Journey, readers are invited to consider how we might travel this road of mourning with those who grieve and how we might join them as partners in a reorientation of the world experienced through loss.
Is the Gospel Good News? was the theme of the 2015 H. H. Bingham Colloquium at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, held on June 4-5. The fourteen participants in this colloquium presented their own individual perspectives on the theme from three broad vantage points–Bible, theology, and crucial topics. The «good news» that Jesus proclaimed concerning the kingdom of God became the «gospel» proclaimed by his followers throughout church history. This gospel is about the coming of Jesus Christ in fulfillment of God's will for humanity. This volume presents some accounts of how this good news has been understood through the ages and continues to be understood in relation to some of the major topics and issues of our contemporary world. The papers in the Bible section discuss this good news from both Old and New Testament passages and themes. The papers in the Theology section address theological topics in light of the question of what constitutes the good news. Finally, the papers in the Crucial Topics section explore new and different perspectives on ways in which the gospel is good news. This volume highlights diverse perspectives and proposals by scholars from various locations in different stages of their academic careers, resulting in a stimulating discussion of the topic of the gospel as good news.
What does failure mean for theology? In the Bible, we find some unsettling answers to this question. We find lastness usurping firstness, and foolishness undoing wisdom. We discover, too, a weakness more potent than strength, and a loss of life that is essential to finding life. Jesus himself offers an array of paradoxes and puzzles through his life and teachings. He even submits himself to humiliation and death to show the cosmos the true meaning of victory. As David Bentley Hart observes, «most of us would find Christians truly cast in the New Testament mold fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable, and really just a bit indecent.»
By incorporating the work of scholars working with a range of frameworks within the Christian tradition, Theologies of Failure aims to offer a unique and important contribution to understanding and embracing failure as a pivotal theological category. As the various contributors highlight, it is a category with a powerful capacity for illuminating our theological concerns and perspectives. It is a category that frees us to see old ideas in a brand-new light, and helps to foster an awareness of ideas that certain modes of analysis may have obscured from our vision. In short, this book invites readers to consider how both theology and failure can help us ask new questions, discover new possibilities, and refuse the ways of the world.
The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, explore the challenges associated with sharing wisdom–learning, teachings, messages for good living. How should religions go about sharing their wisdom? These chapters, representing six faith tradition (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist), explore what wisdom means in each of these traditions; why and how it should be shared, internally and externally; and the role of love and forgiveness in sharing. This book offers a theory that can enrich ongoing encounters between members of faith traditions by suggesting a tradition-based practice of sharing wisdom, while preserving the integrity of the teaching and respecting the identity of anyone with whom wisdom is shared.
Contributors: Pal Ahluwalia, Timothy Gianotti, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Sallie B. King, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Miroslav Volf
This book tackles the core problem of how painful historical memories between diverse religious communities continue to impact–even poison–present-day relations. Its operative notion is the healing of memory, developed by John Paul II. Chapters explore how painful memories of yesteryear can be healed and so address some of the root causes. Strategies from six different faith traditions are brought together in what is, in some ways, a cross-religious brainstorming session that identifies tools to improve present-day relations.
At the other pole of the conceptual axis of this book is the notion of hope. If memory informs our past, hope sets the horizon for our future. How does the healing of memory open new horizons for the future? And what is the notion of hope in each of our traditions that could lead to a common vision of good?
Between memory and hope, this book seeks to offer a vision of healing that can serve as a resource in contemporary interfaith relations.
Contributors: Rahuldeep Singh Gill, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Maria Reis Habito, Flora A. Keshgegian, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Muhammad Suheyl Umar, and Michael von Bruck
Between the world of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity there appears to be the widest difference. Coates's brief comments on Christianity in his highly acclaimed Between the World and Me make clear that religious faith is alien to his own experience. Still, Christian audiences from congregations to theological schools engaged the text for its analysis of the state of race relations in the United States. In September 2015, Ta-Nehisi Coates tweeted, «Best thing about #BetweenTheWorldAndMe is watching Christians engage the work. Serious learning experience for me.» This volume takes that tweet as an invitation to theologians, ethicists, and religious studies scholars to engage the book, and as a challenge to do so in a way that is a learning experience for Coates, the authors, and readers.
In a world I won't see, but I wish I would, the biographies of some others here, including a few whom we serve lunch to, would be written and be read as eagerly as you say one of me would be read. –Dorothy Day
Ambassadors of God is a collection of remarkable obituaries taken from The Catholic Worker newspaper. Rich in anecdote, detail, and unexpected humor, they tell stories of men and women, living in poverty and distress, who were part of the New York Catholic Worker community. Written between 1936 and 2012, these essays shed light on people who might otherwise have been forgotten, but whose lives had a great impact on those who knew them and loved them.
The Catholic Worker and the movement that grew out of it were founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. As Catholics, they sought to live out the Works of Mercy, following the Gospel and the example of the saints. Even years after their deaths, the movement continues to welcome the poor and the stranger in a spirit of nonviolence. These obituaries honor those who came to the doors of The Catholic Worker in great need, and they offer a meditation on our shared humanity.
For centuries, evangelical Protestants and Catholics have hurled harsh epithets at each other. But that has changed dramatically in the last forty years. In 1960, many prominent evangelicals opposed John Kennedy for president because he was a Catholic. Today, Catholics and evangelicals work together on many issues of public policy. This book records one important process in this transformation. In 2004, the board of The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE–the largest representative body of evangelicals in the US) unanimously approved For the Health of the Nation as the official public policy document for its public policy efforts representing 30 million evangelicals. When scholars read this new ground-breaking document, they quickly realized there was widespread agreement between the NAE's official public policy document and the official public policy positions of American Catholics. The result was a series of annual meetings held at Georgetown University and Eastern University that brought together prominent Catholic and Evangelical scholars and public policy specialists to explore the extent of the common ground. This book reports on that dialogue–and its contribution to the increasing Catholic-evangelical cooperation.
Elie Wiesel, plucked from the ashes of the Holocaust, became a Nobel Peace laureate, an activist on behalf of the oppressed, a teacher, an award-winning novelist, and a renowned humanist. He moved easily among world leaders but was equally at home among the disenfranchised. Following his Nobel Prize, Wiesel established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity; one of their early initiatives was the founding of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest.
The reflections in this volume come from judges of the contest. They share their personal and professional experiences working with and learning from Wiesel, providing a glimpse of the person behind the public figure. At a time when the future seems ominous and chaotic at best, these reflections hold on to the promise of an ethically and morally robust possibility. The students whose essays prompt this sense of hope are remarkable for their insight and dedication.
The messages embedded in the judges' reflections mirror Wiesel's convictions about the importance of friendship, the need to interrogate (without abandoning) God, and the power of remembrance in order to fight indifference.