Faithfulness In An Age Of Holocaust

The contents of this book emerge from the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in New York City and the Saint Thomas Project in New Orleans. Two years of working with people on the margins of society confronted Marc Ellis with a truth and challenge: to delve deeper into his own life and the life of the world so as to begin the movement toward a new society. Since that time, in his travels through Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, Ellis has been exposed to the global dimensions of the situations he experienced in New York's Lower East Side and in New Orleans. This book is an attempt to work through the questions posed to Ellis over his years among the poor and through his contact with the global issues of justice and peace. For some, fidelity is a question answered before asked; for the pious through dogma and eternal truth, for the cynic through denial and derision. For Ellis, fidelity is neither assumed nor negated. Rather, it is a struggle through which we search out our own humanity. As human beings born with an unfinished consciousness and into a specific historical context, the struggle to be faithful begins with the historical hour in which we live. This is our burden, but it is also an opportunity to become what we are called to be.

Turmoil still grips the Middle East and fear now paralyzes post-9/11 America. The comforts and challenges of this book are thus as timely as when first published in 1987. With new reflections on the future of Judaism and Israel, Ellis underscores the enduring problem of justice. Ellis' use of liberation theology to make connections between the Holocaust and contemporary communities from the Third World reminds both Jews and oppressed Christians that they share common ground in the experiences of abandonment, suffering, and death. The connections also reveal that Jews and Christians share a common cause in the battle against idolatry--represented now by obsessions for personal affluence, national security, and ethnic survival. According to Ellis, Jews and Christians must never allow the reality of anti-Semitism to become an excuse for evading solidarity with the oppressed peoples--be they African, Asian, Latin American or, especially, Palestinian. --Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and author of God Has a Dream

Marc Ellis fine book about the future of the Jewish community was first published in 1987. But twenty years on, in the light of recent events in the Middle East and post-September 11, its powerful message of hope, directed towards a people 'poised between Holocaust and empowerment', remains as powerful, apposite, and pressingly relevant as it was before. Ellis begins with two poles: the holocaust and the pain and vision that issue from it. This leads him into ethics, and he highlights the contrast between the depth of Jewish ethical commitment and the paucity of renewal movements within Judaism. The author then addresses all suffering peoples, and the Christian liberation movements active among them, so that the holocaust may be set in a wider context. Against this background, Ellis sees it as essential that the journeys and visions of dissenting Jews - such as Etty Hillesum and Martin Buber - should be re-appraised. An alternative perspective of what it means to be Jewish begins to emerge, and in the final chapter a Jewish theology of liberation is essayed, which is a theology prepared 'to enter the danger zones of contemporary Jewish life', often at some cost.

In 1988, many of the world's leading theologians gathered at Maryknoll to honor Gustavo GutiŽrrez, the father of liberation theology. The occasion marked the twentieth anniversary of the Medell'n conference, GutiŽrrez's sixtieth birthday, and publication of a new edition of his enduring classic, A Theology of Liberation. The resulting volume, The Future of Liberation Theology, included over fifty papers presented at that historic gathering. Expanding the View takes key essays from that landmark volume and makes them available for the first time in paperback. From the wealth of material, essays were selected to provide the most comprehensive overview of critical thinking on liberation theology--both its past developments and the challenges it faces in the future. Among the issues addressed: the ways liberation theology has grown and developed in its treatment of popular religion, Marxism, and women's issues, and the contribution of liberation theology to interreligious dialogue, Catholic social teaching, and the struggle for human rights. Critical questions are raised about the future possibilities of liberation theology. Above all, many of the contributors assess the significance of this theology from the Third World for Christians living in the affluent First World. Ideal for classroom use, and essential reading for everyone interested in this vital movement, this volume includes GutiŽrrez's own Expanding the View, which introduces the fifteenth anniversary edition of A Theology of Liberation. Contributors include: Elisabeth Schÿssler Fiorenza, Aloysius Pieris, Arthur McGovern, Franiois Houtart, Harvey Cox, Edward Schillebeeckx, Rosemary Ruether, Penny Lernoux, Leonardo Boff, Johann Baptist Metz, Gregory Baum, JosŽ M'guez Bonino, Pablo Richard, Robert McAfee Brown, and Maria Clara Bingemer.

This collection of original essays addresses a new and controversial avenue for Jewish-Christian dialogue: the project of liberation theology. While some Jews have welcomed the work of Latin American liberation theologians, others have been critical--both of Christian liberation theology, its treatment of Jewish history and scripture, and of any project of Jewish liberation theology. This dialogue has prompted Latin American liberation theologians to develop in turn their own responses to such issues as the state of Israel, the Palestinian question, the approach to the Hebrew Bible, the meaning of the Holocaust, the legacy of anti-Semitism, and the problem of empowerment in both Christian and Jewish history. Contributors: Judd Kruger Levingston, Marc H. Ellis, Richard L. Rubenstein, Arthur Waskow, Michael Lerner, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Leonardo Boff, Pablo Richard, Julio de Santa Ana, Phyllis B. Taylor, Dorothee Sšlle, and Norman Solomon

The present collection of writings on postcolonial philosophy of religion takes its origins from a Philosophy of Religion session during the 1996 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in New Orleans. Three presentations, by Purushottama Bilimoria, Andrew B. Irvine, and Bhibuti Yadav, were to be offered at the session, with Thomas Dean presiding and Kenneth Surin responding. (Yadav, unfortunately could not be present because of illness. ) This was the ?rst AAR session ever to examine issues in the study of religion under the rubric of the postcolonial turn in academia. Interest at the session was intense. For instance, Richard King, then at work on the manuscriptof the landmark Orientalism and Religion, was present; so, too, was Paul J. Grif?ths, whose s- sequent work on interreligious engagement has been so noteworthy. In response to numerous audience appeals, revised versions of the presentations eventually were published, as a “Dedicated Symposium on ‘Subalternity’,” in volume 39 no. 1 (2000) of Sophia, the international journal for philosophy of religion, metaphysical theology and ethics. Since that time, the importance of the nexus of religion and the postcolonial has become increasingly patent not only to philosophers of religion but to students of religion across the range of disciplines and methodologies. The increased inter- tionalization of the program of the American Academy of Religion, especially in more recent years, is a signi?cant outgrowth of this transformation in conscio- ness among students of religion.

This book is a consideration of major contemporary Black and Jewish understanding of God, examining how profound faith in a just God is sustained, and even strengthened, in the face of particularly horrific and long-standing evil and suffering in a community.

Richard L. Rubenstein was the first American Jewish thinker to theologically probe into the events of the Holocaust in Europe. Both the man and his writings dared to question and confront institutional religion and conventional Jewish thought. This volume stands out as a study of, an understanding of, and a tribute to Rubenstein and his work. It offers a wide array of original essays by 38 contributors, from former students to colleagues. Because these contributors write from personal connections with the main or his writings, What Kind of God? provides readers with an enlightened understanding and appreciation of Richard L. Rubenstein.