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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

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 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

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

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

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

Citizens or Papists?: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685-1821

Jason K. Duncan

Based on careful work with rare archival sources, this book fills a gap in the history of New York Catholicism by chronicling anti-Catholic feeling in pre-Revolutionary and early ... More

Based on careful work with rare archival sources, this book fills a gap in the history of New York Catholicism by chronicling anti-Catholic feeling in pre-Revolutionary and early national periods. Colonial New York, despite its reputation for pluralism, tolerance, and diversity, was also marked by severe restrictions on religious and political liberty for Catholics. The logic of the American Revolution swept away the religious barriers, but Anti-Federalists in the 1780s enacted legislation preventing Catholics from holding office and nearly succeeded in denying them the franchise. The latter effort was blocked by the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, who saw such things as an impediment to a new, expansive nationalist politics. By the early years of the 19th century, Catholics gained the right to hold office due to their own efforts in concert with an urban-based branch of the Republicans, which included radical exiles from Europe. With the contributions of Catholics to the War of 1812 and the subsequent collapse of the Federalist Party, by 1820 Catholics had become a key part of the triumphant Republican coalition, which within a decade would become the new Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.Less

City of Gods: Religious Freedom, Immigration, and Pluralism in Flushing, Queens

R. Scott Hanson

City of Gods is a history and ethnography of Flushing, Queens, in New York City. An important site in colonial America for its place in the history of religious freedom, Flushing is now perhaps the ... More

City of Gods is a history and ethnography of Flushing, Queens, in New York City. An important site in colonial America for its place in the history of religious freedom, Flushing is now perhaps the most striking case of religious and ethnic pluralism in the world—and an ideal place to explore how America's long experiment with religious freedom, immigration, and religious pluralism began and continues. While other studies of tend to look at the big picture of religious pluralism in the U.S., City of Gods is grounded in a community study that maps out the range of responses to diversity over time. Flushing’s extremely dense and diverse concentration of different religious institutions in an urban neighborhood (over 200 places of worship in 2.5 square miles) may seem like a unique case, but cities, towns, and neighborhoods all across the country are becoming more diverse, too—and each will have to learn to live with pluralism. Indeed, we may be able to glimpse the future of American religion in Flushing not only because the striking exaggeration of its diversity sharply defines the issues, but also because the story of Flushing mirrors that of the nation in microcosm.Less

Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet

Antonio Spadaro

In this book, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., Director of the Italian Journal La Civiltà Cattolica, attempts to address a new phenomenon – Cybertheology. If theology is talking about God, Cybertheology is ... More

In this book, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., Director of the Italian Journal La Civiltà Cattolica, attempts to address a new phenomenon – Cybertheology. If theology is talking about God, Cybertheology is the way in which God is talked about on the Internet. Spadaro’s background is in literary criticism, theology and philosophy and he draws on a wide variety of sources in order to explain his premise. He hopes to begin to answer some of the questions that have arisen: What is the significance of the Internet for the faith? In which world do we live? Is it the same one that it used to be? What is the answer to “where do we live?” Today, we also inhabit a digital space, what is its significance for the faith in which values are adopted from the fact that ‘The Word was made flesh and came amongst us.’ How is the cyberworld changing our world, and what is its impact on faith? Using theorists from anthropology, philosophy, theology, sociology and the Internet – as well as literary sources, the author attempts to answer the questions he has posed, noting that not everything about the Web is new, least of all the theories that are associated with it today.Less

Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents

Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-Buck (eds)

The dynamic interplay of democracy, culture, and Catholicism in the contemporary world is analyzed in twenty-three essays focused on four diverse countries: Indonesia, Lithuania, Peru, and the United ... More

The dynamic interplay of democracy, culture, and Catholicism in the contemporary world is analyzed in twenty-three essays focused on four diverse countries: Indonesia, Lithuania, Peru, and the United States. The three-way relationship between democracy, culture, and Catholicism in these countries refracts in multiple directions. Each offers instructive comparisons and contrasts regarding the relationship between politics, civil society, and religion worldwide. Whereas Indonesia is a consolidating democracy, Lithuania is transitioning to democracy. While Peru’s democracy still struggles with a post-colonial legacy, the United States is an old democracy struggling to maintain and expand its vision of freedom and equality. While Indonesia is rooted in Pacific Asian culture, Lithuania locates its identity in ancient Slavic traditions. Peru takes great pride in its indigenous and Latin heritage, while the United States expresses its national soul in an ethnic ‘melting pot’ culture. In Indonesia, the Catholic population is a tiny minority; in Lithuania a once-majority Catholic population has rapidly dissipated. Catholicism is still the dominant religion in Peru; in the United States, Catholics are a ‘large’ but declining minority. The rich contrasts are explored in essays by historians, theologians, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, lawyers, and scholars in literature and communication studies. An introduction guides the reader through the book’s rich weave, as do the introductory notes offered at the beginning of each chapter. Informative and creative from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the book is a resource for new approaches and authors on the subject of politics, civil society, and religion.Less

Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between

Jeremy Stolow (ed.)

Drawing upon a wide range of historical and ethnographic examples, this book approaches the study of religion and technology from an interdisciplinary perspective, synthesizing recent work in the ... More

Drawing upon a wide range of historical and ethnographic examples, this book approaches the study of religion and technology from an interdisciplinary perspective, synthesizing recent work in the anthropology and history of religion, media studies, and science and technology studies. The book comprises eleven original case studies plus an introduction that critically assesses the existing literature on religion and technology, and suggests future paths of scholarly inquiry. Discussions range across different religious traditions (including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Spiritualism, Buddhism, and Vodou) in different regions of the world (including Western Europe, United States, Ghana, Brazil, and Japan), and with regard to an array of technologies and technological procedures (including clocks and other timekeeping devices, magically empowered cables, belts, and talismans, kidney dialysis machines, and Internet-mediated commercial transactions). The fundamental operating premise of the book is that religion and technology do not refer to two mutually exclusive realms of knowledge, practice, and experience, but rather to a continuum of relationships between and among diverse material and immaterial entities, forces, and actors. Each chapter offers a concrete case study, attending to the things that lie “in between” religion and technology as they are commonly divided, and on that basis provides new analytical insight into the very construction of these categories in scholarly as well as non-academic discourses.Less

Faith, Resistance, and the Future: Daniel Berrigan's Challenge to Catholic Social Thought

James L. Marsh and Anna Brown (eds)

The book presents Daniel Berrigan’s contributions and challenge to Catholic social thought. His contribution lies in his consistent, comprehensive, theoretical, and practical approach to issues of ... More

The book presents Daniel Berrigan’s contributions and challenge to Catholic social thought. His contribution lies in his consistent, comprehensive, theoretical, and practical approach to issues of peace and justice over the last fifty years. His challenge lies in his criticism of capitalism, imperialism, and militarism, inviting Catholic activists and thinkers to undertake not just a reformist but a radical critique and alternative to these realities. The aim of this book is, for the first time, to make Berrigan’s thought and life available to the Catholic academic community, so that a fruitful interaction takes place. How does his work enlighten and challenge such a community? How can this community enrich and criticize his work? To these ends, the editors have recruited thinkers, scholars, thinker-activists already familiar with and sympathetic with Berrigan’s work and those who are less so identified. The result is a rich, receptive, and critical treatment of the meaning nd impact of his work. What kind of challenge does he present to academic business-as-usual in Catholic universities? How can the life and work of individual Catholic academics be transformed if such persons took Berrigan’s work seriously, theoretically and practically? Do Catholic universities need Berrigan’s vision to fulfill more integrally and completely their own mission? Does the self-knowing subject and theorist need to become a radical subject and theorist? In light of the world’s current social, political, economic, and environmental crises, doesn’t Berrigan’s call for a pacific and prophetic community of justice rooted in the Good News of the Gospel make compelling sense?Less

Friends on the Way: Jesuits Encounter Contemporary Judaism

Thomas S.J. Michel (ed.)

The largest religous order in the Roman Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus, has been at the forefront of the Church's efforts at dialogue across religions. Understanding and improving relations ... More

The largest religous order in the Roman Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus, has been at the forefront of the Church's efforts at dialogue across religions. Understanding and improving relations between the Church and the Jewish people has been a major focus of the Holy See and the Society of Jesus for many years. This book, the fruit of a major conference on the history, nature, and dynamics of relations between Jesuits and contemporary Jewish life, brings together a selection of chapters by Jesuit scholars and pastoral leaders, a Jewish studies scholar, and a rabbi. Drawing on a variety of approaches in historical and constructive theology, literary criticism, and spirituality, the chapters explore historical, philosophical, theological, cultural, and institutional themes—from Ignatian perspectives on Halakhic spirituality and the role played in Jesuit history by Jews forced to convert to Christianity to Jesuit perspectives on Hannah Arendt, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Harold Bloom.Less

Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism

Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos (eds)

Tradition, secularization and fundamentalism—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation, they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. The ... More

Tradition, secularization and fundamentalism—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation, they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. The discussion around the mutually implicated meanings of the “secular” and “fundamentalism” bring to the foreground more than ever, and in a way unprecedented in the pre-modern context, the question of what it means to think and live as Tradition. The Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, in particular, have always emphasized Tradition not as a dead letter but as a living presence of the Holy Spirit. But how can we discern when Tradition as living discernment is not fundamentalism? And what does it mean to think as a Tradition and live in Tradition when surrounded by something like the “secular”? The essays in this volume continue both the interrogation of the categories of the “secular” and “fundamentalism,” all the while either implicitly or explicitly exploring ways of thinking about tradition in relation to these interrogations. In this interrogation, however, one witnesses a consensus that whatever the secular or fundamentalism may mean, it is not Tradition, which is historical, particularistic, in motion, ambiguous and pluralistic, while simultaneously not being relativistic. If the wider debates about the secular and fundamentalism seem interminable and often frustrating, perhaps the real contribution of those discussions is a clearer sense of what it means to live and think like—to be as Tradition.Less

God's Mirror: Renewal and Engagement in French Catholic Intellectual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Katherine Davies and Toby Garfitt (eds)

God’s Mirror explores how French Catholic intellectual culture in the mid-twentieth century was caught up in the process of transition from a closed, defensive and conceptual theological structure of ... More

God’s Mirror explores how French Catholic intellectual culture in the mid-twentieth century was caught up in the process of transition from a closed, defensive and conceptual theological structure of the late-nineteenth century to an open, “authentic” and “experientially” committed faith. The volume offers different stories of renewal and engagement in Catholicism, which address the nature of this transition and the tensions therein. What unites these stories is their illumination of a Catholicism that is increasingly concerned with the human being and the concrete, lived reality of faith. These renewals and engagements are examined against the backdrop of the cultural and political crises of the interwar years through to the post-war reconstruction period in France and Francophone Canada. This periodization brings into focus the continuity between the 1930s and the nouvelle théologie movement that preceded Vatican II. God’s Mirror sheds new light on the historiographical narrative of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the modern world by exploring the shifting cultural, theological and philosophical contours of faith and its political and social commitments. Richly interdisciplinary in scope, contributions range across literature, philosophy, theology, politics and music, including amongst them discussions of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Valéry, Jean Grenier, Charles Du Bos, Olivier Messiaen, Simone Weil, Georges Bernanos, Marie-Madeleine Davy, Robert Charbonneau, Paul Beaulieu, and Louis Massignon. These figures were all engaged in the task of revitalizing or reconfiguring Catholicism, from within or on the margins, and contributed to sketching the possibilities and parameters of modern Catholicism and Catholic identity.Less

In the World, Yet Not of the World: Social and Global Initiatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

John Chryssavgis (ed.)

This book represents a selection of major addresses and significant messages as well as public statements by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “first ... More

This book represents a selection of major addresses and significant messages as well as public statements by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “first among equals” and spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians. The Patriarch is as comfortable preaching about the spiritual legacy of the Orthodox Church as he is promoting sociopolitical issues of his immediate cultural environment and praying for respect toward Islam or for global peace. As the documents reveal, the tenure of the Ecumenical Patriarch has been characterized by inter-Orthodox cooperation, inter-Christian dialogue and interreligious understanding. He has travelled more extensively than any other Orthodox Patriarch in history, exchanging official visitations with numerous ecclesiastical and state dignitaries. In particular, because he is a citizen of Turkey and the leader of a Christian minority in a predominantly Muslim nation, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's personal experience endows him with a unique perspective on religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue. These documents are drawn from his prominent leadership roles as primary spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian world and transnational figure of global significance. Published together here for the first time, the writings reveal the Ecumenical Patriarch as a bridge builder and peacemaker. Some of the topics covered include: faith and freedom; racism and fundamentalism; mutual respect and tolerance; ecology and poverty; human rights and freedom; racial and religious discrimination; Church and state; terrorism and corruption; freedom of conscience; Europe, Turkey and the world; religion and politics; Christians and Muslims; Christians and Jews.Less