The Future Has An Ancient Heart

Feminist cultural historian Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum caps her previous work with The Future has an Ancient Heart, a scholarly study of the transformative legacy of African origins and values of caring, sharing, healing, and vision carried by African migrants throughout the world. Birnbaum focuses on the long endurance of these values from the first human communities in south and central Africa, ones that Africans manifested in the region of the African mediterranean landmass that later separated Africa from Europe and Asia when the ice melted and waters rose. These migrants reached every continent and later became spiritual as well as geograpical migrations back to Africa, from ancient times to the transformative present. Using the same methods as her teaching, Birnbaum employs a mutual learning process in her work to help us think about our own ancestral story, adding to the wisdom we need to surmount contemporary crises and give us the energy to help bring a more equal and just world into being. Her methodologies are grounded on empirical techniques of science and the social sciences and yet leave openings for the liminal knowledge that resides underneath and beyond boundaries of established religions, secular ideologies, and conventional science. A true work of transformation, The Future has an Ancient Heart opens the door to new possibilities within our world.

Feminist cultural historian Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum caps her previous work with The Future has an Ancient Heart, a scholarly study of the transformative legacy of African origins and values of caring, sharing, healing, and vision carried by African migrants throughout the world. Birnbaum focuses on the long endurance of these values from the first human communities in south and central Africa, ones that Africans manifested in the region of the African mediterranean landmass that later separated Africa from Europe and Asia when the ice melted and waters rose. These migrants reached every continent and later became spiritual as well as geograpical migrations back to Africa, from ancient times to the transformative present. Using the same methods as her teaching, Birnbaum employs a mutual learning process in her work to help us think about our own ancestral story, adding to the wisdom we need to surmount contemporary crises and give us the energy to help bring a more equal and just world into being. Her methodologies are grounded on empirical techniques of science and the social sciences and yet leave openings for the liminal knowledge that resides underneath and beyond boundaries of established religions, secular ideologies, and conventional science. A true work of transformation, The Future has an Ancient Heart opens the door to new possibilities within our world.

Drawing on her experiences around the world, and in the troubled but fascinating state of Yemen in particular, Donna Kennedy-Glans suggests that we have the power to reframe our own ideas about gender, while creating a new and more subtle dialogue with traditional cultures, including fundamentalist Islam. With many telling examples from her own rich personal experience, and using both traditional wisdom and some of the latest research in various fields, she advances the idea of subtle connections, respect, "breathing spaces" that would replace chauvinism and confrontation, and create dialogues from which vital new relations would emerge, both on the personal and social levels.

"Italy is an intriguing paradox: a center of Catholicism in which echoes of goddess worship resonate in everyday Christian ritual. In the Christian tradition, whiteness symbolizes purity, blackness evil. In the religions of Old Europe, however, blackness evoked the fecundity of the earth. White madonnas embody the church doctrine of obedience and patience; black madonnas, many of which have been retouched to appear white, symbolize the equality of all creatures." "In this fascinating study, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum demonstrates that Italy's black madonnas represent a point of convergence between ancient and modern religious traditions. Drawing on a solid ground of original research, she argues that they are an amalgam of the Christian madonna, African and Asian dark woman divinities, and the ancient goddess of Old Europe. Through them, long submerged prehistoric religious and political beliefs have erupted, forming the core of twentieth-century Italian feminism." "Birnbaum has discovered that areas of radical political activity in Italy are often near archaeological sites of prehistoric goddess worship. And these sites are nearly always the locations of black madonnas. Following a thread of common themes - equality, resistance to injustice, and regeneration - Birnbaum demonstrates that the values associated with goddess worship are those that surround black madonnas. And the same themes are the backbone of left-wing political movements - from feminism to socialism to the green movement - in twentieth-century Italy." "Black Madonnas recounts the ways in which the church attempted to eradicate the popular beliefs of the peasantry and examines the traditions that have survived. The book catalogues the customs and rituals, ceremonies and celebrations, stories and songs, and the everyday lives of peasant women to uncover the traces of ancient practices that permeate modern Christian ritual."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved