At the fiftieth anniversary of the Old Testament Society of South Africa a conference was organized on the theme Exile and Suffering. This volume contains a selection of the papers presented. Focal questions are such themes as: What do we really know about the Exile? To what degree did suffering take place? How did the Ancient Israelites cope with the disaster? Where the ancinet traditions sufficient to deal with the Exile? Or did this period produce new forms of 'theology'? The significance of the Exile as a matrix for understanding suffering until this day is also dealt with.
This book, winner of the 2007 Siglo XXI International Essay Prize, is unique in its approach to exile and offers remarkable insights into the subject. It discusses both human nature and the phenomenon of exile with depth and exactness from the combined perspectives of philosophy, morality, politics, anthropology, and history. After retracing the lessons learned through diverse experiences of exile from antiquity to modern times, it uses poetry as metatestimony to examine exile, subjectivity, and the many moral and political implications involved. The result is a series of thoughtprovoking connections between exile and the way we assume our lives.
Suffering and exclusion are normal in a believer's life. At least they should be. This was certainly Jesus's experience. And it's the experience of countless Christians around the world today.No matter your social location or set of experiences, the biblical letter of 1 Peter wants to redefine your expectations and reinvigorate your hope.Drawing on years of ministry in a Muslim-majority nation, Elliot Clark guides us through Peter's letter with striking insights for today. Whether we're in positions of power or weakness, influence or marginalization, all of us are called to live and witness as exiles in a world that's not our home. This is our job description. This is our mission. This is our opportunity.A church in exile doesn't have to be a church in retreat.
Robert Hopkins was a man caught between two worlds. As a member of the Dakota Nation, he was unfairly imprisoned, accused of taking up arms against U.S. soldiers when war broke out with the Dakota in 1862. However, as a Christian convert who was also a preacher, Hopkins's allegiance was often questioned by many of his fellow Dakota as well. Without a doubt, being a convert--and a favorite of the missionaries--had its privileges. Hopkins learned to read and write in an anglicized form of Dakota, and when facing legal allegations, he and several high-ranking missionaries wrote impassioned letters in his defense. Ultimately, he was among the 300-some Dakota spared from hanging by President Lincoln, imprisoned instead at Camp Kearney in Davenport, Iowa, for several years. His wife, Sarah, and their children, meanwhile, were forced onto the barren Crow Creek reservation in Dakota Territory with the rest of the Dakota women, children, and elderly. In both places, the Dakota were treated as novelties, displayed for curious residents like zoo animals. Historian Linda Clemmons examines the surviving letters from Robert and Sarah; other Dakota language sources; and letters from missionaries, newspaper accounts, and federal documents. She blends both the personal and the historical to complicate our understanding of the development of the Midwest, while also serving as a testament to the resilience of the Dakota and other indigenous peoples who have lived in this region from time immemorial.
One of the most intriguing and engaging voices in contemporary Christianity is that of the Irish poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama and this is his first, long-awaited poetry collection. Hailing from the Ikon community in Belfast and working closely with its founder, the bestselling writer Pete Rollins, Pádraig’s poetry interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith. Pádraig’s poems are accessible, memorable profound and challenging. They emerge powerfully from a context of struggle and conflict and yet are filled with hope.
Exile and Identity focuses on the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Polish women forcibly transported deep into the USSR as prisoners or "special settlers" after the Soviet invasion and annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. Using firsthand accounts ranging from the briefly factual to the intensely personal, Katherine R. Jolluck reconstructs the daily lives and attitudes of Polish women based on reports collected upon their amnesty and evacuation from the USSR. These moving stories provide a clear and detailed picture of the conditions in which these women were forced to live, and examine how those victimized interpreted and coped with their daily traumas.
Part of the Jewish Encounter series From one of our most trusted spiritual advisers, a thoughtful, illuminating guide to that most fascinating of biblical texts, the book of Job, and what it can teach us about living in a troubled world. The story of Job is one of unjust things happening to a good man. Yet after losing everything, Job—though confused, angry, and questioning God—refuses to reject his faith, although he challenges some central aspects of it. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner examines the questions raised by Job’s experience, questions that have challenged wisdom seekers and worshippers for centuries. What kind of God permits such bad things to happen to good people? Why does God test loyal followers? Can a truly good God be all-powerful? Rooted in the text, the critical tradition that surrounds it, and the author’s own profoundly moral thinking, Kushner’s study gives us the book of Job as a touchstone for our time. Taking lessons from historical and personal tragedy, Kushner teaches us about what can and cannot be controlled, about the power of faith when all seems dark, and about our ability to find God. Rigorous and insightful yet deeply affecting, The Book of Job is balm for a distressed age—and Rabbi Kushner’s most important book since When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
In Wonder and Exile in the New World, Alex Nava explores the border regions between wonder and exile, particularly in relation to the New World. It traces the preoccupation with the concept of wonder in the history of the Americas, beginning with the first European encounters, goes on to investigate later representations in the Baroque age, and ultimately enters the twentieth century with the emergence of so-called magical realism. In telling the story of wonder in the New World, Nava gives special attention to the part it played in the history of violence and exile, either as a force that supported and reinforced the Conquest or as a voice of resistance and decolonization. Focusing on the work of New World explorers, writers, and poets—and their literary descendants—Nava finds that wonder and exile have been two of the most significant metaphors within Latin American cultural, literary, and religious representations. Beginning with the period of the Conquest, especially with Cabeza de Vaca and Las Casas, continuing through the Baroque with Cervantes and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and moving into the twentieth century with Alejo Carpentier and Miguel Ángel Asturias, Nava produces a historical study of Latin American narrative in which religious and theological perspectives figure prominently.
N. T. Wright is well known for his view that the majority of Second Temple Jews saw themselves as living within an ongoing exile. This book engages a lively conversation with this idea, beginning with a lengthy thesis from Wright, responses from eleven New Testament scholars, and a concluding essay from Wright responding to his interlocutors.
Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied—and often outweighed—these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.
