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Pilgrims travel thousands of miles to visit Salvation Mountain, a unique religious structure in the Southern California desert. Built by Leonard Knight (1931–2014), variously described as a modern-day prophet and an outsider artist, Salvation Mountain offers a message of divine love for humanity. In Middle of Nowhere Sara M. Patterson argues that Knight was a spiritual descendant of the early Christian desert ascetics who escaped to the desert in order to experience God more fully. Like his early Christian predecessors, Knight received visitors from all over the world who were seeking his wisdom. In Knight’s wisdom they found a critique of capitalism, a challenge to religious divisions, and a celebration of the common person. Recounting the pilgrims’ stories, Middle of Nowhere examines how Knight and the pilgrims constructed a sacred space, one that is now crumbling since the death of its creator.
Creating Women's Theology engages women's questions: - Can women from different religious traditions engage one theological approach? - Can one philosophical approach support feminist religious thought? - What kind of belief follows women's criticism of traditional Christianity? Creating Women's Theology offers a portrait of how some women have found room for faith and feminism. For the last twenty-five years, women religion scholars have synthesized process philosophy with their feminist sensibilities and faith commitments to highlight the value of experience, the importance of freedom, and the interdependence of humanity, God, and all creation. Cutting across cultural and religious traditi...
So That All May Flourish provides a substantive and accessible introduction to the vocation, educational priorities, and theological foundations of Lutheran Higher Education (LHE) and the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU). Intended as a "primer," the book seeks to cultivate knowledge of LHE and NECU that is both appreciative, critical, and constructive. The book includes 16 chapters across three important organizing sections: Core Commitments, Distinctive Strengths, and Contemporary Callings. Each chapter is written by scholars from various NECU institutions and highlights a distinctive educational priority, explores its theological groundings, and offers examples of how it is embodied in a variety of distinctive ways on different NECU campuses. The result is a rich tour of Lutheran higher education as a site for important formative work. The book also includes a short preface, forward, and epilogue. Written by a veritable who's who of Lutheran higher education, this volume is a must read for everyone concerned about the work being done on Lutheran campuses.
Operating on the premise that our failure to recognize our interconnected relationship to the rest of the cosmos is the origin of planetary peril, this volume presents academic, activist, and artistic perspectives on how to inspire reflection and motivate action in order to construct alternative frameworks and establish novel solidarities for the sake of our planetary home. The selections in this volume explore ecologies of interdependence as a frame for religious, theological, and philosophical analysis and practice. Contributors examine questions of justice, climate change, race, class, gender, and coloniality and discuss alternative ways of engaging the world in all its biodiversity. Each...
By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre...
In times of rising pressures and catastrophes, people yearn for alternatives. So does the planet. Protests are often a start, but rebellion is not revolution, nor does it always lead to transformation. In this incisive and compelling new book, Joerg Rieger takes a new look at the things that cause unease and discomfort in our time, leading to the growing destruction and death of people and the planet. Only when these causes are understood, he argues, can real alternatives be developed. And yet, understanding is only a start. Solidarity, and the willingness to work at the seemingly impossible intersections of everything--the triad of gender, race, and class, yes, but more beyond--must mark the work of theology. Without solidarities that match the complexities of our world, the best we can hope for is inclusion in the dominant system but hardly the systemic change and liberation we so desperately need.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Xiamen’s pursuit of World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO stimulated considerable interest in the city’s Christian past. History enthusiasts, both Christian and non-Christian, devoted themselves to reinterpreting the legacy of missionaries and challenged official narratives of Christianity’s troubled associations with Western imperialism. In this book, Jifeng Liu documents the tension that has inevitably emerged between the established official history and these popular efforts. This volume elucidates the ways in which Christianity has become an integral part of Xiamen, a Chinese city profoundly influenced by Western missionaries. Drawing ...
The first of its kind, this book is a systematic presentation of Lutheran feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologies: systematic, in that it addresses classical loci of systematic theology; contemporary, in that it is resoundingly constructive and relevant for the contemporary church; and feminist, in that the contributors write from a feminist perspective although they reflect a variety of positions within feminist discourse. The contributors to this multi-authored work share a common commitment to Lutheran theology as a continual process of reform. Luther is a partner in the conversation because of his theological insights and commitment to faithful criticism, which the writers seek to c...
Juxtaposing theological inquiry with the philosophical movement of new materialism, Sam Mickey reflects on questions of human embodiment, nonhuman agency, technological innovation, and possible futures for humankind. New Materialism and Theology opens several pathways for thinking about what really matters.
Following the Communist Revolution of 1949, missionaries were kicked out of China and proselytizing was outlawed. However, since the beginning of the reform era, China has witnessed a massive return of missionary workers. Today there are more Christians in church on a given Sunday in China than anywhere else on the globe. This book investigates the interaction of Western missionaries, ethnic minorities, and Han Chinese converts with the Chinese state in an increasingly globalized China. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan, it tries to make sense of the disparity between official state rhetoric and everyday reality. Examining morality in the context of the free-marke...