'Empire' has become an apt label to name the present horizon of global life and is associated with logic and practices which threaten human life in myriad ways. These reflections not only expose the true nature of empire, but suggest an alternative vision of flourishing wrought by God's kingdom. In a creative and imaginative manner the contributions highlight new liberative possibilities for life through non-conventional Bible reading. The authors display a sensitive moral antenna for the oppressive manifestations of empire, and courageously intimate a new paradigm for Christian mission and public witness today.
?Empire? has become an apt label to name the present horizon of global life and is associated with logic and practices which threaten human life in myriad ways. These reflections not only expose the true nature of empire, but suggest an alternative vision of flourishing wrought by God?s kingdom. In a creative and imaginative manner the contributions highlight new liberative possibilities for life through non-conventional Bible reading. The authors display a sensitive moral antenna for the oppressive manifestations of empire, and courageously intimate a new paradigm for Christian mission and public witness today. This book contains inspiring intersections of contextual Bible reading with impressing stories ÿabout people at the margins in all continents, complemented by prayers, poems and literature. Ideal for Bible study leaders working with marginalized people but also with middle class Christians who can learn to read the Bible from the underside of history and act for justice.
Globalization. Homelessness. Ecological and economic crisis. Conflicts over sexuality. Violence. These crisis-level issues may seem unique to our times, but Paul's Letter to the Romans has something to say to all of them. Following their successful Colossians Remixed, Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh unpack the meaning of Romans for its original context and for today. The authors demonstrate how Romans disarms the political, economic, and cultural power of the Roman Empire and how this ancient letter offers hope in today's crisis-laden world. Romans Disarmed helps readers enter the world of ancient Rome and see how Paul's most radical letter transforms the lives of the marginalized then and now. Intentionally avoiding abstract debates about Paul's theology, Keesmaat and Walsh move back and forth between the present and the past as they explore themes of home, economic justice, creation care, the violence of the state, sexuality, and Indigenous reconciliation. They show how Romans engages with the lived reality of those who suffer from injustice, both in the first century and in the midst of our own imperial realities.
At the heart of the Bible is a moral and ethical call to fight unjust superpowers, whether they are Babylon, Rome, or even America. From the divine punishment and promise found in Genesis through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, John Dominic Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and, ultimately, redemption. In contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century, he examines the meaning of the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus and the equality advocated by Paul to the early Christian churches. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military actions in the Middle East. In God and Empire Crossan surveys the Bible from Genesis to Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, and discovers a hopeful message that cannot be ignored in these turbulent times. The first-century Pax Romana, Crossan points out, was in fact a "peace" won through violent military action. Jesus preached a different kind of peace—a peace that surpasses all understanding—and a kingdom not of Caesar but of God. The Romans executed Jesus because he preached this Kingdom of God, a kingdom based on peace and justice, over the empire of Rome, which ruled by violence and force. For Jesus and Paul, Crossan explains, peace cannot be won the Roman way, through military victory, but only through justice and fair and equal treatment of all people.
For centuries, the Bible has been used by colonial powers to undergird their imperial designs--an ironic situation when so much of the Bible was conceived by way of resistance to empires. In this thoughtful book, Mark Brett draws upon his experience of the colonial heritage in Australia to identify a remarkable range of areas where God needs to be decolonized--freed from the bonds of the colonial. Writing in a context where landmark legal cases have ruled that Indigenous (Aboriginal) rights have been 'washed away by the tide of history', Brett re-examines land rights in the biblical traditions, Deuteronomy's genocidal imagination, and other key topics in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament where the effects of colonialism can be traced. Drawing out the implications for theology and ethics, this book provides a comprehensive new proposal for addressing the legacies of colonialism. A ground-breaking work of scholarship that makes a major intervention into post-colonial studies. This book confirms the relevance of post-colonial theory to biblical scholarship and provides an exciting and original approach to biblical interpretation. Bill Ashcroft, University of Hong Kong and University of New South Wales; author of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (2002). Acutely sensitive to the historical as well as theological complexity of the Bible, Mark Brett's Decolonizing God brilliantly demonstrates the value of a critical assessment of the Bible as a tool for rethinking contemporary possibilities. The contribution of this book to ethical and theological discourse in a global perspective and to a politics of hope is immense. Tamara C. Eskenazi, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles; editor of The Torah: A Women's Commentary (2007).
This volume brings together respected biblical scholars to evaluate the turn toward "empire criticism" in recent New Testament scholarship. While praising the movement for its deconstruction of Roman statecraft and ideology, the contributors also provide a salient critique of the anti-imperialist rhetoric pervading much of the current literature.
The purpose of the Essential Guides series is to fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to the core disciplines in biblical, theological, and religious studies
Gospel and History picks up where Scriptural Reflections on History left off, but with the added benefit of some 30 years' experience of life in church and society between them - indeed, the entire post-war period of the recovering 1950s and the revolutionary 1960s. A lot of water had gone under the bridge, and this was also true of Reformational philosophy. Theology in many respects was turning liberal, and Popma spends a great deal of time refuting the rationale behind that turn, the supposed need to keep up with the times, to keep in step with "modern man." For its part, true historical understanding must take the Biblical narrative into account, and more than that, it must take it seriously. For example: "We, by virtue of our very humanity, [are required to] make the personal acquaintance of the first human pair, inexperienced and innocent as they were. That is a difficult assignment, but it is not impossible, so long as we are prepared to enter a relationship that makes us as it were contemporaries of Adam and Eve. 'Modern man' so-called-Is he really that modern? Or is that modernity a mere excuse to back out of his simple human task?-'modern man cannot accept this, ' that is to say, he refuses to accept this. That has been the case throughout the ages. It's not at all 'modern'" (p. 167). "It is exceedingly foolish... to aver that this (as such mythical) modern man cannot accept the ascension of Christ. The unanswered (and for now unanswerable) questions relative to Christ's ascension into heaven existed already for the apostles who had witnessed the ascension with their own eyes. Our historicity does not differ all that much from that of people who lived two thousand years ago. Babbling about 'modern man' can call up pseudo-problems whereby the real difficulties are hidden from view" (p. 186). "'Modern man' is supposed to have discovered, with the cultural means of 'modern' times, that, viewed from a 'modern' perspective, demons do not 'exist, ' although they did exist for the apostles because their cultural pattern left lots of room for the 'existence' of demons, cosmic powers, spiritual forces of evil. A historicism of this kind brings with it the need for a general revision and invalidation of the biblical message" (p. 187). In opposition to this, a Scriptural, gospel-oriented view of history must take these data into account as "hard facts" (the title of another of Popma's scriptural explorations), and when that is done we arrive at a new vision of history, one which stretches back even before the material creation to that of angels and demons, and takes the entirety of history into account from that point onward, precisely as salvation history. The action of God in history is a series of judgments which seem ineffectual but which in actuality bring forth a new world, revealed at the Last Judgment. And history extends onward into the future beyond that final judgment. For there is no real end to history, except for those cast into outer darkness, who as such are no longer allowed to participate in it. "History was already there when God through the Mother Promise declared history to be salvation history.... history will still be there when salvation will have been accomplished: after Judgment Day and the resurrection of the flesh, history will continue-one might even say: then history starts in earnest, in the second and last Paradise, which will far eclipse the first in glory. The cultural mandate will go on; its field of activity will be immense" (p. 83). All in all, "the meaning of history consists in this, that God wants to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth" (p. 98). In Popma's hands, history becomes a far greater thing than we can even imagine - and rightly so.
An Introduction to Early Church History, Being a Survey of the Relations of Christianity and Paganism in the Early Roman Empire by Robert Martin Pope, first published in 1918, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
Perhaps, after all, the decolonising agenda isn’t extra baggage the church needs to carry on top of everything else. Perhaps, instead, it is the very heart of what the church should be about – disrupting, uncomfortable, and bringing about a kind of ‘holy anarchy’. In Holy Anarchy, Graham Adams points to a realm in which all dynamics of domination, not least in the church, are subverted. It cuts across the loyalties and boundaries of religion and fosters the greatest possible solidarity amongst the different. Urgent and timely, the book weaves together themes around Empire, liberation and decolonial practice with an exploration of the nature and scope of church community, interreligious engagement, mission, and worship.
