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After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy

John Panteleimon Manoussakis

Who or what comes after God? In the wake of God, as the last fifty years of philosophy has shown, God comes back again, otherwise: Heidegger's last God, Levinas's God of Infinity, ... More

Who or what comes after God? In the wake of God, as the last fifty years of philosophy has shown, God comes back again, otherwise: Heidegger's last God, Levinas's God of Infinity, Derrida's and Caputo's tout autre, Marion's God without Being, and Kearney's God who may be. This book attempts to represent some of the most considered responses to Richard Kearney's recent writings on the philosophy of religion, in particular The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion and Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. It brings together seventeen essays that share the common problematic of the otherness of the Other — seventeen different variations on the same theme: philosophy about God after God — that is to say, a way of thinking God otherwise than ontologically.Less

After the Monkey Trial: Evangelical Scientists and a New Creationism

Christopher M. Rios

Over the past generation, considerable historical attention has been given to evangelical Christians who attacked modern evolutionary theories. This book, by contrast, sheds light on the ... More

Over the past generation, considerable historical attention has been given to evangelical Christians who attacked modern evolutionary theories. This book, by contrast, sheds light on the under-studied story of twentieth-century Christians who remained theologically conservative, but refused to take up arms against modern science—those who sought to show the compatibility of biblical Christianity and the conclusions of mainstream science, including evolution. It focuses on the middle decades of the twentieth century, the same period in which creationism became a movement within evangelicalism, and on two groups of evangelical scientists, the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) and the UK-based Research Scientists’ Christian Fellowship (RSCF, today Christians in Science). Drawing on published and unpublished sources, including conference papers, interviews, and private correspondence, this book shows how these organizations pursued a reconciliation of science and theology that contradicted the fundamentalist ethos of the period and denied the claims that creationism entailed antievolutionism.Less

American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism

Gary J. Adler Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks (eds)

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American ... More

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes—like leadership and education—and ongoing parish struggles—like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological reengagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic reengagement with sociological analysis. This book highlights how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change influence the inner workings of parishes. Five parts explore thematic topics: (1) seeing parishes with a sociological lens; (2) parish trends; (3) race, class, and diversity in parish life; (4) young Catholics in (and out) of parishes; and (5) the practice and future of a sociology of Catholic parishes. Contributors explore the history of sociological studies on parishes; consider parish research vis-à-vis the larger field of congregational studies; empirically examine parishes using multiple methods; highlight parish diversity and particularity; explore cultural and identity production within parishes; consider the tenuous relationship of younger Catholics to parishes; and provide direction for future sociological research on parishes.Less

The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty

Erin Runions

Following allusions to Babylon in secular and religious discourse in the decade after 9.11, this book explores the complicated influence of the Bible on U.S. political thought. Babylon is a ... More

Following allusions to Babylon in secular and religious discourse in the decade after 9.11, this book explores the complicated influence of the Bible on U.S. political thought. Babylon is a surprisingly multivalent symbol in U.S. culture and politics. This composite biblical figure—taken from interpretive traditions about Babylon, Babel, and the Whore of Babylon—is variously used to celebrate diversity and also to condemn it, to sell sexuality and to regulate it, to worry about homogeneous tyrannical imperialism and to galvanize the “war on terror” and the war in Iraq. Babylon becomes so much a site of admiration and an object of vilification that the United States can be said to have a Babylon complex. This book shows that the Babylon complex contends with anxieties about the loss of political sovereignty in economic globalization, while encouraging the very market forces that undermine sovereignty. Shifting and contradictory allusions to Babylon reveal a theopolitically motivated biopolitics that tries to balance the drive for U.S. dominance with the countervailing moral ideals and forms of political subjectivity that further economic globalization and control the distribution of wealth. The centering and decentering impulses of Babylon and Babel give the composite figure the biblical authority to manage this tension and sustain U.S. empire. The book interrogates the interpretive moves by which the Bible gains its political authority and proposes instead other modes of reading that take the figure of Babylon as a catalyst for a detranscendentalized, queer, sublime, radically democratic polity.Less

Being-in-Creation: Human Responsibility in an Endangered World

Brian Treanor, Bruce Benson, and Norman Wirzba (eds)

What is the proper relationship between human beings and the more-than-human world? This philosophical question, which underlies vast environmental crises, forces us to investigate the tension ... More

What is the proper relationship between human beings and the more-than-human world? This philosophical question, which underlies vast environmental crises, forces us to investigate the tension between our extraordinary powers, which seem to set us apart from nature, even above it, and our thoroughgoing ordinariness, as revealed by the evolutionary history we share with all life. The contributors to this volume ask us to consider whether the anxiety of unheimlichkeit, which in one form or another absorbed so much of twentieth-century philosophy, might reveal not our homelessness in the cosmos but a need for a fundamental belongingness and implacement in it.Less

Believing Scholars: Ten Catholic Intellectuals

James L. Heft (ed.)

How do Catholic intellectuals draw on faith in their work? And how does their work as scholars influence their lives as people of faith? In this book, ten leading figures explore the connections in ... More

How do Catholic intellectuals draw on faith in their work? And how does their work as scholars influence their lives as people of faith? In this book, ten leading figures explore the connections in their own lives between the private realms of faith and their public calling as teachers, scholars, and intellectuals. This last decade of Marianist Lectures brings together theologians and philosophers, historians, anthropologists, academic scholars, and lay intellectuals and critics. Here are Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., on the tensions between faith and theology in his career; Jill Ker Conway on the spiritual dimensions of memory and personal narrative; Mary Ann Glendon on the roots of human rights in Catholic social teaching; Mary Douglas on the fruitful dialogue between religion and anthropology in her own life; Peter Steinfels on what it really means to be a "liberal Catholic"; and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels on the complicated history of women in today's church. From Charles Taylor and David Tracy on the fractured relationship between Catholicism and modernity to Gustavo Gutierrez on the enduring call of the poor and Marcia Colish on the historic links between the church and intellectual freedom, these essays track a decade of provocative, illuminating, and essential thought.Less

Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious Studies

Kimerer L. LaMothe

This book provides philosophical grounds for an emerging area of scholarship: the study of religion and dance. In the first part, the book investigates why scholars in religious ... More

This book provides philosophical grounds for an emerging area of scholarship: the study of religion and dance. In the first part, the book investigates why scholars in religious studies have tended to overlook dance, or rhythmic bodily movement, in favor of textual expressions of religious life. In close readings of Descartes, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, the book traces this attitude to formative moments of the field in which philosophers relied upon the practice of writing to mediate between the study of “religion”, on the one hand, and “theology”, on the other. In the second part, the book revives the work of theologian, phenomenologist, and historian of religion Gerardus van der Leeuw for help in interpreting how dancing can serve as a medium of religious experience and expression. In so doing, it opens new perspectives on the role of bodily being in religious life, and on the place of theology in the study of religion.Less

Beyond the Doctrine of Man: Decolonial Visions of the Human

Joseph Drexler-Dreis and Kristien Justaert (eds)

Beyond the Doctrine of Man responds to the question of how individuals and communities can live and have lived beyond the way the human person is defined in colonial modernity. This volume brings ... More

Beyond the Doctrine of Man responds to the question of how individuals and communities can live and have lived beyond the way the human person is defined in colonial modernity. This volume brings together essays that interrogate the problem of modern/colonial definitions of the human person and that take up the struggle to decolonize these descriptive statements. As the problem of coloniality transcends disciplinary constructions, so do the contributions in this book. They engage work from various fields, including ethnic studies, religious studies, theology, queer theory, philosophy, and literary studies. The essays in Beyond the Doctrine of Man were catalyzed by Sylvia Wynter’s questioning of modern/colonial descriptions of the human person. Wynter asks this question within a larger project of unsettling and countering these definitions. Contributors to this collection follow in this move—sometimes in direct reference to Wynter’s work and sometimes primarily focusing on the work of others—of asking how Western modernity has naturalized itself through a discourse on the human. This analytical work taken up by contributors is at the service of unsettling and countering this naturalization.Less

Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima

Yuki Miyamoto

This monograph explores the ethics and religious sensibilities of a group of the hibakusha (survivors) of 1945's atomic bombings. Although the atomic bombings of 1945 have been studied from the ... More

This monograph explores the ethics and religious sensibilities of a group of the hibakusha (survivors) of 1945's atomic bombings. Although the atomic bombings of 1945 have been studied from the points of view of various disciplines, the survivors' ethic—not retaliation, but reconciliation—emerging from their experiences and supported by their religious sensibilities, has never been addressed sufficiently in academic discourse. Rather their ethic has been excluded from the atomic bomb discourse or nuclear ethics. In examining Hiroshima city's “secular” commemoration, Hiroshima's True Pure Land Buddhist understanding, and Nagasaki's Roman Catholic tradition, I argue that the hibakusha's ethic and philosophy, based upon critical self-reflection, could offer resources for the constructing ethics based upon memories, especially in the post-9–11 world. Thus, this monograph, responding to this lacuna in scholarship, invites readers to go beyond the mushroom cloud where they encounter actual hibakusha's ethical thoughts.Less

Beyond Violence: Religious Sources of Social Transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

James L. Heft (ed.)

In an age of terrorism and other forms of violence committed in the name of religion, how can religion become a vehicle for peace, justice, and reconciliation? And in a world of ... More

In an age of terrorism and other forms of violence committed in the name of religion, how can religion become a vehicle for peace, justice, and reconciliation? And in a world of bitter conflicts—many rooted in religious difference—how can communities of faith understand one another? these chapters address a fundamental question: how the three monotheistic traditions can provide the resources needed in the work of justice and reconciliation. Rabbis Irving Greenberg and Reuven Firestone each examine the relationship of Judaism to violence, exploring key sources and the history of power, repentance, and reconciliation. From Christianity, philosopher Charles Taylor explores the religious dimensions of “categorical” violence against other faiths, other groups, while Scott Appleby traces the emergence since Vatican II of nonviolence as a foundation of Catholic theology and practice. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, discusses Muslim support of pluralism and human rights, and Mohamed Fathi Osman examines the relationship between political violence and sacred sources in contemporary Islam. By focusing on the transformative powers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the chapters in this book provide new beginnings for people of faith committed to restoring peace among nations through peace among religions.Less

Black Lives and Sacred Humanity: Toward an African American Religious Naturalism

Carol Wayne White

This book explores a new religious ideal within African American culture that emerges from humanistic assumptions and is grounded in religious naturalism. Identifying African American religiosity as ... More

This book explores a new religious ideal within African American culture that emerges from humanistic assumptions and is grounded in religious naturalism. Identifying African American religiosity as the ingenuity of a people constantly striving to inhabit their humanity and eke out a meaningful existence for themselves amid culturally coded racist rhetoric and practices, it constructs a concept of sacred humanity and grounds it in existing hagiographic and iconic African American writings. The first part of the book argues for a concept of sacred humanity that is supported by the best available knowledge emerging from science studies, philosophy of religion, and the tenets of religious naturalism. With this concept, the book features capacious views of humans as dynamic, evolving, social organisms having the capacity to transform ourselves and create nobler worlds where all sentient creatures flourish, and as aspiring lovers of life and of each other. Within the context of African American history and culture, the sacred humanity concept also offers new ways of grasping an ongoing theme of traditional African American religiosity: the necessity of establishing and valuing blacks’ full humanity. In the second part, the book traces indications of the sacred humanity concept within select works of three major African American intellectuals of the early and mid-twentieth century: Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Dubois, and James Baldwin. The theoretical linkage of select ideas and themes in their writings with the concept of sacred humanity marks the emergence of an African American religious naturalism.Less

Black Robes & Buckskin: A Selection from the Jesuit Relations

Catharine Randall

The Jesuit Relations, written by new world Jesuit missionaries from 1632 to 1673 back to their Superior in France, have long been a remarkable source of both historical knowledge and spiritual ... More

The Jesuit Relations, written by new world Jesuit missionaries from 1632 to 1673 back to their Superior in France, have long been a remarkable source of both historical knowledge and spiritual inspiration. They provide rich information about Jesuit piety and missionary initiatives, Ignatian spirituality, the Old World patrons who financed the venture, women's role as collaborators in the Jesuit project, and the early history of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in what was to become the northeastern United States and Canada. The Jesuits approached the task of converting the native peoples, and the formidable obstacles it implied, in a flexible manner. One of their central values was inculturation, the idea of coming in by their door, to quote a favorite saying of Ignatius, via a creative process of syncretism that blended aspects of native belief with aspects of Christian faith, in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance. The Relations thus abound with examples of the Jesuits' thoughtfully trying to make sense of native- and female-difference, rather than eliding it. The complete text of the Jesuit Relations runs to 73 volumes. This book makes selections from the Relations, some of which have never before appeared in print in English. These selections are chosen for their informative nature and for how they illustrate central tenets of Ignatian spirituality. Rather than provide close translations from 17th-century French that might sound stilted to modern ears, this book offers free translations that provide the substance of the Relations in an idiom immediately accessible to 21st-century readers of English. An introduction sets out the basic history of the Jesuit missions in New France and provides insight into the Ignatian tradition and how it informs the composition of the Relations. The volume is illustrated with early woodcuts, depicting scenes from Ignatius's life, moments in the history of the Jesuit missions, Jesuit efforts to master the native languages, and general devotional scenes.Less

Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress

Raymond A. Schroth

This book shows that the contentious mixture of religion and politics in the United States is nothing new. Four decades ago, Father Robert Drinan, the fiery Jesuit priest from Massachusetts, not only ... More

This book shows that the contentious mixture of religion and politics in the United States is nothing new. Four decades ago, Father Robert Drinan, the fiery Jesuit priest from Massachusetts, not only demonstrated against the Vietnam War, he ran for Congress as an antiwar candidate and won, going on to serve for ten years. This book includes research taken from magazine and newspaper articles and various archives and interviews with dozens of those who knew Drinan to bring forth here a life-sized portrait.Less

The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910-1985

Jack Downey

This study investigates the origins, development, and influence of a controversial retreat movement which emerged as a self-consciously countercultural response to the socio-religious revival in ... More

This study investigates the origins, development, and influence of a controversial retreat movement which emerged as a self-consciously countercultural response to the socio-religious revival in early twentieth-century Québec. The movement's founder and namesake, Onésime Lacouture, S.J., developed a redaction of the Ignatian Exercises that was heavily informed by his mystical experiences and ascetic theology. The retreat was wildly attractive to some, while others saw it as overly severe, possibly heretical. The retreat endured Lacouture's personal suppression, and migrated southward to the United States, nesting among sympathetic clergy constellated around Pittsburgh. Its most prolific advocate and apologist was a diocesan priest named John Hugo, who traded blows with antagonistic critics and was himself “exiled” to a series of suburban Pennsylvanian parishes. Hugo would proselytize the retreat tirelessly, and found an enthusiastic vessel in Dorothy Day—cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, candidate for sainthood, and an icon of contemporary radical Catholic activism. From a socially withdrawn contemplative movement—deeply opposed to mainstream Canadien assimilation into Anglo Canadian culture and the then-ascendant “social Catholicism”—the Lacouture retreat would morph into spiritual fodder for arguably the most radically socially engaged iteration of Roman Catholicism in North America. This book discusses the evolution of “Lacouturisme” and its impact on Catholic Worker theology within the contexts of the Christian ascetic tradition, Catholic engagements with “Modernism,” and spiritual transnationalism.Less

Cathedrals of Bone: The Role of the Body in Contemporary Catholic Literature

John C. Waldmeir

The metaphor of the Church as a “body” has shaped Catholic thinking since the Second Vatican Council. Its influence on theological inquiries into Catholic nature and practice is well-known; less ... More

The metaphor of the Church as a “body” has shaped Catholic thinking since the Second Vatican Council. Its influence on theological inquiries into Catholic nature and practice is well-known; less obvious is the way it has shaped a generation of Catholic imaginative writers. This is the first full-length study of a cohort of Catholic authors whose art takes seriously the themes of the Council: from novelists such as Mary Gordon, Ron Hansen, Louise Erdrich, and J. F. Powers, to poets such as Annie Dillard, Mary Karr, Lucia Perillo, and Anne Carson, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley. Each of these writers encourages readers to think about the human body as a site—perhaps the most important site—of interaction between God and human beings. Although they represent the body in different ways, these late-twentieth-century Catholic artists share a sense of its inherent value. Moreover, they use ideas and terminology from the rich tradition of Catholic sacramentality, especially as it was articulated in the documents of Vatican II, to describe that value. In this way they challenge the Church to take its own tradition seriously and to reconsider its relationship to a relatively recent apologetics that has emphasized a narrow view of human reason and a rigid sense of orthodoxy.Less

The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome

Norbert J. Hofmann and Joseph Sievers

Philip A Cunningham (ed.)

This book makes available in fifteen chapters English essays that mark the fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian ... More

This book makes available in fifteen chapters English essays that mark the fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate). Surveying Vatican dialogues and documents, the chapters explore theological questions posed by the Shoah and the Catholic recognition of the Jewish people's covenantal life with God. Featuring essays by Vatican officials, leading rabbis, diplomats, and Catholic and Jewish scholars, the book discusses the nature of Christian–Jewish relations and the need to remember their conflicted and often tragic history, aspects of a Christian theology of Judaism, the Catholic–Jewish dialogue since the Shoah, and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel. The book includes an essay by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and documents on the rapprochement between the Church and the Jewish people.Less

Catholic Social Learning: Educating the Faith That Does Justice

Roger Bergman

The canon for Catholic social teaching spreads to six hundred pages, yet fewer than two pages are devoted to Catholic social learning or pedagogy. This book begins to correct that gross imbalance. It ... More

The canon for Catholic social teaching spreads to six hundred pages, yet fewer than two pages are devoted to Catholic social learning or pedagogy. This book begins to correct that gross imbalance. It asks: How do we educate (lead out) the faith that does justice? How is commitment to social justice provoked and sustained over a lifetime? To address these questions, the book weaves what has been learned from thirty years as a faith-that-does-justice educator with the best of current scholarship and historical authorities. The book reflects on personal experience; the experience of Church leaders, lay activists, and university students; and the few words the tradition itself has to say about a pedagogy for justice. This book explores the foundations of this pedagogy, demonstrates its practical applications, and illuminates why and how it is fundamental to Catholic higher education. Part I identifies personal encounters with the poor and marginalized as key to stimulating a hunger and thirst for justice. Part II presents three applications of Catholic social learning: cross-cultural immersion as illustrated by Creighton University's Semestre Dominicano program; community-based service learning; and the teaching of moral exemplars such as Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Oscar Romero. Part III then elucidates how a pedagogy for justice applies to the traditional liberal educational mission of the Catholic university, and how it can be put into action.Less

The Catholic Studies Reader

James T. Fisher and Margaret M. McGuinness (eds)

This is a rare book in an emerging field that has neither a documented history nor a consensus as to what should be a normative methodology. Dividing this volume into five interrelated themes central ... More

This is a rare book in an emerging field that has neither a documented history nor a consensus as to what should be a normative methodology. Dividing this volume into five interrelated themes central to the practice and theory of Catholic Studies —Sources and Contexts, Traditions and Methods, Pedagogy and Practice, Ethnicity, Race, and Catholic Studies, and The Catholic Imagination—the editors provide readers with the opportunity to understand the great diversity within this area of study. Readers will find essays on the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching, as well as reflections on the arts and literature.Less

Christian Lives Given to the Study of Islam

Christian W. Troll and C.T.R. Hewer (eds)

This book captures the autobiographical reflections of twenty-eight Christians who were amongst those who, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and initiatives of the World Council of ... More

This book captures the autobiographical reflections of twenty-eight Christians who were amongst those who, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and initiatives of the World Council of Churches, committed their lives to the study of Islam and to practical Christian-Muslim relations in new and irenic ways. They record what drew them into the study of Islam, how their careers developed, what sustained them in this work and salient milestones along the way. These men and women come from a dozen nationalities and across the spectrum of the Western Church. Their accounts take us to twenty-five countries and into all the branches of Islamic studies: Qur'an, Hadith, Shari'a, Sufism, philology, theology and philosophy. They range in age from late-forties to late-nineties and so have a wealth of experience to share. They give fascinating insights into personal encounters with Islam and Muslims, speak of the ways in which their Christian traditions of spiritual training formed and nourished them, and deal with some of the misunderstandings and opposition that they have faced along the way. In an analytical conclusion, the editors draw out themes and pointers towards future developments. Such a constellation has not existed before and will not be seen again for at least half a century. Theirs is a unique generation and this is their considered contribution to the state of Christian-Muslim engagement today.Less

Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988-2007

Avery Cardinal Dulles

The author of this book has written and lectured on a wide range of topics across his career, and for a wide range of audiences. Integrating faith and scholarship, he has created a ... More

The author of this book has written and lectured on a wide range of topics across his career, and for a wide range of audiences. Integrating faith and scholarship, he has created a rich body of work that, in the words of one observer, is “both faithful to Catholic tradition and fresh in its engagement with the contemporary world” Here are the talks the author has given twice each year since the Laurence J. McGinley Lectures were initiated in 1988, conceived broadly as a forum on Church and society. The result is a diverse collection that reflects the breadth of his thinking and engages with many of the most important—and difficult—religious issues of our day. Organized chronologically, the lectures are often responses to timely issues, such as the relationship between religion and politics, a topic he treated in the last weeks of the presidential campaign of 1992. Other lectures take up questions surrounding human rights, faith and evolution, forgiveness, the death penalty, the doctrine of religious freedom, the population of hell, and a whole array of theological subjects, many of which intersect with culture and politics. The life of the Church is a major and welcome focus of the lectures, whether they be a reflection on Cardinal Newman or an exploration of the difficulties of interfaith dialogue. The author responds frequently to initiatives of the Holy See, discussing gender and priesthood in the context of church teaching, and Pope Benedict's interpretation of Vatican II. He seeks to “render the wisdom of past ages applicable to the world in which we live”. For those seeking to share in this wisdom, this book will be a guide to what it means to be Catholic—indeed, to be a person of any faith—in a world of rapid, relentless change.Less