After the Gulf War and amidst the ongoing “peace process,” this timely book speaks to the need to address the deeper issues of Israel and Palestine—issues that concerned Jews, Arabs, and Christians must face if the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and the moral integrity of the State of Israel are to survive the rush to a “new world order” in the Middle East.
Richly illustrated with images from Art Spiegelman’s Maus (“the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” —The Wall Street Journal), Maus Now includes work from twenty-one leading critics, authors, and academics—including Philip Pullman, Robert Storr, Ruth Franklin, and Adam Gopnik—on the radical achievement and innovation of Maus, more than forty years since the original publication of “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker). Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists; it’s hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture. Maus shaped the fields of literature, history, and art, and has enlivened our collective sense of possibilities for expression. A timeless work in more ways than one, Maus has also often been at the center of debates, as its recent ban by the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board from the district’s English language-arts curriculum demonstrates. Maus Now: Selected Writing collects responses to Spiegelman’s monumental work that confirm its unique and terrain-shifting status. The writers approach Maus from a wide range of viewpoints and traditions, inspired by the material’s complexity across four decades, from 1985 to 2018. The book is organized into three loosely chronological sections— “Contexts,” “Problems of Representation,” and “Legacy”—and offers for the first time translations of important French, Hebrew, and German essays on Maus. Maus is revelatory and generative in profound and long-lasting ways. With this collection, American literary scholar Hillary Chute, an expert on comics and graphic narratives, assembles the world’s best writing on this classic work of graphic testimony.
The T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology is a comprehensive reference resource informed by serious theological scholarship in the three Abrahamic traditions. The engaging and original contributions within this collection represent the epitome of contemporary scholarship in theology, religion, philosophy, history, law, and political science, from leading scholars in their area of specialization. Comprised of five sections that illuminate the rise and relevance of political theology, this handbook begins with the birth of contemporary “political theology,” and is followed by discussions of historical resources and past examples of interaction between theology and politics from all three Abrahamic traditions. The third section surveys the leading figures and movements that have had an impact on the discipline of political theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and the contributors then build on previously discussed historical resources and methods to engage with contemporary issues and challenges, emphasizing interreligious dialogue, even while addressing concerns of relevance to a particular faith tradition. The volume concludes with three essays that look at the future of political theology from the perspective of each Abrahamic religion. Complete with select bibliographies for each topic, this companion features the most current overview of political theology that will reach a broader, global audience of students and scholars
The concept of the Jews as a chosen people is a key element of the Jewish faith and identity. This book explores the idea of chosenness from the ancient world, through modernity and into the Post-Holocaust era. Analysing a vast corpus of biblical, ancient, rabbinic and modern Jewish literature, the author seeks to give a better understanding of this central doctrine of the Jewish religion. She shows that although the idea of chosenness has been central to Judaism and Jewish self-definition, it has not been carried to the present day in the same form. Instead it has gone through constant change, depending on who is employing it, against what sort of background, and for what purpose. Surveying the different and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the doctrine of chosenness that appear in Ancient, Modern, and Post-Holocaust periods, the dominant themes of ‘Holiness’, ‘Mission’, and ‘Survival’ are identified in each respective period. The theological, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the question of Jewish chosenness are thus examined in their historical context, as responses to the challenges of Christianity, Modernity, and the Holocaust in particular. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Jewish Studies, the Holocaust, religion and theology.
At its heart, liberation theology is a modern theology of resistance to the oppression imposed by colonialist and post-colonialist systems and even by churches that cooperate with secular centers of power to oppress the poor and disadvantaged. It is a grassroots social justice theology, a cri de cœur, that seeks to give spiritual succor and hope to those living in seemingly hopeless circumstances. Palestinians—a people whose suffering has largely been forgotten by the world since Israel’s establishment and who are most often stereotyped as extremists and enemies of Israel with no legitimate claim to their own homeland—are among the world’s most marginalized populations. The small Palestinian Christian community, an indigenous population descended from Jesus’s first followers, has created a liberation theology for the Palestinian context that reaches out to its own Christian faithful and their Muslim compatriots. This is a nonviolent political-theological resistance that follows Jesus’s teaching that God is present with all God’s children and heeds Jesus’s gospel injunctions to comfort the suffering and “let the oppressed go free.” For Palestinians, their very survival in the land is resistance to Israel’s efforts to remove them, and liberation theology sustains their resistance. Jesus was the first liberation theologian.
The seventeenth-century poet and divine Thomas Traherne finds innocence in every stage of existence. He finds it in the chaos at the origins of creation as well as in the blessed order of Eden. He finds it in the activities of grace and the hope of glory, but also in the trials of misery and even in the abyss of the Fall. Boundless Innocence in Thomas Traherne’s Poetic Theology traces innocence through Traherne’s works as it transgresses the boundaries of the estates of the soul. Using grammatical and literary categories it explores various aspects of his poetic theology of innocence, uncovering the boundless desire which is embodied in the yearning cry: ’Were all Men Wise and Innocent...’ Recovering and reinterpreting a key but increasingly neglected theme in Traherne’s poetic theology, this book addresses fundamental misconceptions of the meaning of innocence in his work. Through a contextual and theological approach, it indicates the unexplored richness, complexity and diversity of this theme in the history of literature and theology.
“Set in a world where madness equates to power . . . An alarming, original and compulsive tale laced with a blackly comic sensibility.” —Anthony Ryan, New York Times–bestselling author A darkly imaginative writer in the tradition of Joe Abercrombie, Peter V. Brett, and Neil Gaiman conjures a gritty mind-bending fantasy, set in a world where delusion becomes reality . . . and the fulfillment of humanity’s desires may well prove to be its undoing. Faith shapes the landscape, defines the laws of physics, and makes a mockery of truth. Common knowledge isn’t an axiom, it’s a force of nature. What the masses believe is. But insanity is a weapon, conviction a shield. Delusions give birth to foul new gods. Violent and dark, the world is filled with the Geisteskranken—men and women whose delusions manifest, twisting reality. High Priest Konig seeks to create order from chaos. He defines the beliefs of his followers, leading their faith to one end: a young boy, Morgen, must Ascend to become a god. A god they can control. But there are many who would see this would-be-god in their thrall, including the High Priest’s own Doppels, and a Slaver no one can resist. Three reprobates—The Greatest Swordsman in the World, a murderous Kleptic, and possibly the only sane man left—have their own nefarious plans for the young god. As these forces converge on the boy, there’s one more obstacle: time is running out. When one’s delusions become more powerful, they become harder to control. The fate of the Geisteskranken is to inevitably find oneself in the Afterdeath. The question, then, is: Who will rule there?
Most thoughtful people live in an interregnum between science and religion. Traditional religious answers concerning the beginning, purpose, and end of life are questioned by the natural sciences, with neuroscience conceivably constituting the last frontier where skeptics and believers explore common ground. The question concerns the nature of reflective and creative moments in life. Can these be reduced to the intersect between the nerve cells and molecules of the physical brain? Does this account for the human sense of mystery, or even spirituality? Is there a nexus between the physical and unknown dimensions of existence? The mutation in the history of theism suggests that progressive theology in the West may be set for further change.
Riordan Barrett: Last Rake Standing With his comrade rakes-in-arms succumbing to respectability, anyone might think that wicked Riordan Barrett is next. But such happy endings aren't for him--the whole of society knows there isn't a redeemable bone in his sinfully sexy body. Suddenly Riordan finds himself not only an earl...but father to two young wards His only experience is in the art of irresponsibility. This rake needs help--and hiring a young, pretty governess won't be such a hardship Sweet, innocent Maura Caulfield is the only lady in London seemingly unaware of Riordan's disreputable ways. But it won't stay like that for long. He'll show her just how much fun sinning can be....
Author Mark Braverman shows how the Jewish quest for safety and empowerment and the Christian endeavor to atone for centuries of anti-Semitism have combined to suppress the conversations needed to bring about a just and lasting peace in the Holy Land. Fatal Embrace charts Braverman's journey as an American Jew struggling with the difficult realities of modern Israel. The book vividly describes the spiritual and psychological forces driving the discourse and is a call to action to Americans of all faiths.
