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Foreword
- Emily Leah Silverman, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA
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- Book:
- Edith Stein and Regina Jonas
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 March 2014
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- 30 November 2013, pp ix-xi
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Summary
Emily Leah Silverman's book, Edith Stein and Regina Jonas: Religious Visionaries in the Time of the Death Camps, is a major contribution to the literature on German Jewish women in the Nazi era. Silverman has written a powerful testimony to the vision of these two women and their ministry in this time of insane violence and attempted extermination of the Jewish people. Silverman writes a profoundly insightful study of these two women and their diverse paths of spiritual leadership.
Edith Stein (1891–1942) grew up in an observant Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, but as a woman received no in-depth knowledge of her faith. She developed a deep desire for knowledge at an early age, receiving a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She studied under the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and wrote her dissertation on “The Problem of Empathy.” She worked as Husserl's assistant at the University of Freiburg, but was denied a habilitational thesis because she was a woman. In 1932 she became a lecturer at the University of Münster, but was forced to resign in 1933 due to the anti-Semitic legislation of the Nazis that forbade employment of Jews.
Preface
- Edited by Emily Leah Silverman, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, Dirk von der Horst, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, Whitney Bauman, Florida International University
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- Book:
- Voices of Feminist Liberation
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 April 2014
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- 31 December 2012, pp vii-xvi
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This festschrift, Voices of Feminist Liberation, which gathers together essays from fourteen former doctoral students who worked with me, is a most gratifying tribute to my work of teaching and writing over forty-five years. These scholars, themselves now teachers and writers in the midst of their own careers, studied with me at several academic institutions – at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where I taught for twenty-seven years, from 1975 to 2002; at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where I held a special five-year appointment from 1999 to 2005; and at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, where I have been teaching since 2005. The editors of this collection, Emily Leah Silverman, Dirk von der Horst, and Whitney Bauman, have done a remarkable job of contacting these scholars who have worked with me over the years and bringing together a coherent group of essays under the three themes of “The Crucible of Experience and the Life of Dialogue,” “Legacies of Colonialism and Resistance,” and “Angles on Ecofeminism.” These three topics point to creative intersections where my scholarly and social activist concerns interconnect with each of their own life work as writers, teachers and moral agents.
For me, these scholars, now teaching in institutions across the US from Florida, South Carolina and Boston to the Midwest and West Coast represent far more than former students whom I taught in classes and whose dissertations I helped advise. They are a network of colleagues and friends who continue to enrich my life as I interact with their ongoing work and lives.
The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith. By Sarah Azaransky. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. viii + 167 pp. $55.00 cloth.
- Rosemary Radford Ruether
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- Journal:
- Church History / Volume 81 / Issue 2 / June 2012
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 May 2012, pp. 504-505
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- June 2012
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Contributors
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- By Rose Teteki Abbey, K. C. Abraham, David Tuesday Adamo, LeRoy H. Aden, Efrain Agosto, Victor Aguilan, Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Charanjit Kaur AjitSingh, Dorothy B E A Akoto, Giuseppe Alberigo, Daniel E. Albrecht, Ruth Albrecht, Daniel O. Aleshire, Urs Altermatt, Anand Amaladass, Michael Amaladoss, James N. Amanze, Lesley G. Anderson, Thomas C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, Hope S. Antone, María Pilar Aquino, Paula Arai, Victorio Araya Guillén, S. Wesley Ariarajah, Ellen T. Armour, Brett Gregory Armstrong, Atsuhiro Asano, Naim Stifan Ateek, Mahmoud Ayoub, John Alembillah Azumah, Mercedes L. García Bachmann, Irena Backus, J. Wayne Baker, Mieke Bal, Lewis V. Baldwin, William Barbieri, António Barbosa da Silva, David Basinger, Bolaji Olukemi Bateye, Oswald Bayer, Daniel H. Bays, Rosalie Beck, Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, Wolfgang Behringer, Christopher M. Bellitto, Byard Bennett, Harold V. Bennett, Teresa Berger, Miguel A. Bernad, Henley Bernard, Alan E. Bernstein, Jon L. Berquist, Johannes Beutler, Ana María Bidegain, Matthew P. Binkewicz, Jennifer Bird, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Dmytro Bondarenko, Paulo Bonfatti, Riet en Pim Bons-Storm, Jessica A. Boon, Marcus J. Borg, Mark Bosco, Peter C. Bouteneff, François Bovon, William D. Bowman, Paul S. Boyer, David Brakke, Richard E. Brantley, Marcus Braybrooke, Ian Breward, Ênio José da Costa Brito, Jewel Spears Brooker, Johannes Brosseder, Nicholas Canfield Read Brown, Robert F. Brown, Pamela K. Brubaker, Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Colin O. Buchanan, Stanley M. Burgess, Amy Nelson Burnett, J. Patout Burns, David B. Burrell, David Buttrick, James P. Byrd, Lavinia Byrne, Gerado Caetano, Marcos Caldas, Alkiviadis Calivas, William J. Callahan, Salvatore Calomino, Euan K. Cameron, William S. Campbell, Marcelo Ayres Camurça, Daniel F. Caner, Paul E. Capetz, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, Patrick W. Carey, Barbara Carvill, Hal Cauthron, Subhadra Mitra Channa, Mark D. Chapman, James H. Charlesworth, Kenneth R. Chase, Chen Zemin, Luciano Chianeque, Philip Chia Phin Yin, Francisca H. Chimhanda, Daniel Chiquete, John T. Chirban, Soobin Choi, Robert Choquette, Mita Choudhury, Gerald Christianson, John Chryssavgis, Sejong Chun, Esther Chung-Kim, Charles M. A. Clark, Elizabeth A. Clark, Sathianathan Clarke, Fred Cloud, John B. Cobb, W. Owen Cole, John A Coleman, John J. Collins, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Paul K. Conkin, Beth A. Conklin, Sean Connolly, Demetrios J. Constantelos, Michael A. Conway, Paula M. Cooey, Austin Cooper, Michael L. Cooper-White, Pamela Cooper-White, L. William Countryman, Sérgio Coutinho, Pamela Couture, Shannon Craigo-Snell, James L. Crenshaw, David Crowner, Humberto Horacio Cucchetti, Lawrence S. Cunningham, Elizabeth Mason Currier, Emmanuel Cutrone, Mary L. Daniel, David D. Daniels, Robert Darden, Rolf Darge, Isaiah Dau, Jeffry C. Davis, Jane Dawson, Valentin Dedji, John W. de Gruchy, Paul DeHart, Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Miguel A. De La Torre, George E. Demacopoulos, Thomas de Mayo, Leah DeVun, Beatriz de Vasconcellos Dias, Dennis C. Dickerson, John M. Dillon, Luis Miguel Donatello, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Susanna Drake, Jonathan A. Draper, N. Dreher Martin, Otto Dreydoppel, Angelyn Dries, A. J. Droge, Francis X. D'Sa, Marilyn Dunn, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Rifaat Ebied, Mark J. Edwards, William H. Edwards, Leonard H. Ehrlich, Nancy L. Eiesland, Martin Elbel, J. Harold Ellens, Stephen Ellingson, Marvin M. Ellison, Robert Ellsberg, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Eldon Jay Epp, Peter C. Erb, Tassilo Erhardt, Maria Erling, Noel Leo Erskine, Gillian R. Evans, Virginia Fabella, Michael A. Fahey, Edward Farley, Margaret A. Farley, Wendy Farley, Robert Fastiggi, Seena Fazel, Duncan S. Ferguson, Helwar Figueroa, Paul Corby Finney, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Thomas E. FitzGerald, John R. Fitzmier, Marie Therese Flanagan, Sabina Flanagan, Claude Flipo, Ronald B. Flowers, Carole Fontaine, David Ford, Mary Ford, Stephanie A. Ford, Jim Forest, William Franke, Robert M. Franklin, Ruth Franzén, Edward H. Friedman, Samuel Frouisou, Lorelei F. Fuchs, Jojo M. Fung, Inger Furseth, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Brandon Gallaher, China Galland, Mark Galli, Ismael García, Tharscisse Gatwa, Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Luis María Gavilanes del Castillo, Pavel L. Gavrilyuk, Volney P. Gay, Metropolitan Athanasios Geevargis, Kondothra M. George, Mary Gerhart, Simon Gikandi, Maurice Gilbert, Michael J. Gillgannon, Verónica Giménez Beliveau, Terryl Givens, Beth Glazier-McDonald, Philip Gleason, Menghun Goh, Brian Golding, Bishop Hilario M. Gomez, Michelle A. Gonzalez, Donald K. Gorrell, Roy Gottfried, Tamara Grdzelidze, Joel B. Green, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Cristina Grenholm, Herbert Griffiths, Eric W. Gritsch, Erich S. Gruen, Christoffer H. Grundmann, Paul H. Gundani, Jon P. Gunnemann, Petre Guran, Vidar L. Haanes, Jeremiah M. Hackett, Getatchew Haile, Douglas John Hall, Nicholas Hammond, Daphne Hampson, Jehu J. Hanciles, Barry Hankins, Jennifer Haraguchi, Stanley S. Harakas, Anthony John Harding, Conrad L. Harkins, J. William Harmless, Marjory Harper, Amir Harrak, Joel F. Harrington, Mark W. Harris, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Van A. Harvey, R. Chris Hassel, Jione Havea, Daniel Hawk, Diana L. Hayes, Leslie Hayes, Priscilla Hayner, S. Mark Heim, Simo Heininen, Richard P. Heitzenrater, Eila Helander, David Hempton, Scott H. Hendrix, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Gina Hens-Piazza, Carter Heyward, Nicholas J. Higham, David Hilliard, Norman A. Hjelm, Peter C. Hodgson, Arthur Holder, M. Jan Holton, Dwight N. Hopkins, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, Po-Ho Huang, James Hudnut-Beumler, Jennifer S. Hughes, Leonard M. Hummel, Mary E. Hunt, Laennec Hurbon, Mark Hutchinson, Susan E. Hylen, Mary Beth Ingham, H. Larry Ingle, Dale T. Irvin, Jon Isaak, Paul John Isaak, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Hans Raun Iversen, Margaret C. Jacob, Arthur James, Maria Jansdotter-Samuelsson, David Jasper, Werner G. Jeanrond, Renée Jeffery, David Lyle Jeffrey, Theodore W. Jennings, David H. Jensen, Robin Margaret Jensen, David Jobling, Dale A. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Maxwell E. Johnson, Sarah Johnson, Mark D. Johnston, F. Stanley Jones, James William Jones, John R. Jones, Alissa Jones Nelson, Inge Jonsson, Jan Joosten, Elizabeth Judd, Mulambya Peggy Kabonde, Robert Kaggwa, Sylvester Kahakwa, Isaac Kalimi, Ogbu U. Kalu, Eunice Kamaara, Wayne C. Kannaday, Musimbi Kanyoro, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Kaufmann, Léon Nguapitshi Kayongo, Richard Kearney, Alice A. Keefe, Ralph Keen, Catherine Keller, Anthony J. Kelly, Karen Kennelly, Kathi Lynn Kern, Fergus Kerr, Edward Kessler, George Kilcourse, Heup Young Kim, Kim Sung-Hae, Kim Yong-Bock, Kim Yung Suk, Richard King, Thomas M. King, Robert M. Kingdon, Ross Kinsler, Hans G. Kippenberg, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Clifton Kirkpatrick, Leonid Kishkovsky, Nadieszda Kizenko, Jeffrey Klaiber, Hans-Josef Klauck, Sidney Knight, Samuel Kobia, Robert Kolb, Karla Ann Koll, Heikki Kotila, Donald Kraybill, Philip D. W. Krey, Yves Krumenacker, Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, Simanga R. Kumalo, Peter Kuzmic, Simon Shui-Man Kwan, Kwok Pui-lan, André LaCocque, Stephen E. Lahey, John Tsz Pang Lai, Emiel Lamberts, Armando Lampe, Craig Lampe, Beverly J. Lanzetta, Eve LaPlante, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ariel Bybee Laughton, Leonard Lawlor, Bentley Layton, Robin A. Leaver, Karen Lebacqz, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Marilyn J. Legge, Hervé LeGrand, D. L. LeMahieu, Raymond Lemieux, Bill J. Leonard, Ellen M. Leonard, Outi Leppä, Jean Lesaulnier, Nantawan Boonprasat Lewis, Henrietta Leyser, Alexei Lidov, Bernard Lightman, Paul Chang-Ha Lim, Carter Lindberg, Mark R. Lindsay, James R. Linville, James C. Livingston, Ann Loades, David Loades, Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, Lo Lung Kwong, Wati Longchar, Eleazar López, David W. Lotz, Andrew Louth, Robin W. Lovin, William Luis, Frank D. Macchia, Diarmaid N. J. MacCulloch, Kirk R. MacGregor, Marjory A. MacLean, Donald MacLeod, Tomas S. Maddela, Inge Mager, Laurenti Magesa, David G. Maillu, Fortunato Mallimaci, Philip Mamalakis, Kä Mana, Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Herbert Robinson Marbury, Reuel Norman Marigza, Jacqueline Mariña, Antti Marjanen, Luiz C. L. Marques, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele), Caleb J. D. Maskell, Steve Mason, Thomas Massaro, Fernando Matamoros Ponce, András Máté-Tóth, Odair Pedroso Mateus, Dinis Matsolo, Fumitaka Matsuoka, John D'Arcy May, Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, Theodore Mbazumutima, John S. McClure, Christian McConnell, Lee Martin McDonald, Gary B. McGee, Thomas McGowan, Alister E. McGrath, Richard J. McGregor, John A. McGuckin, Maud Burnett McInerney, Elsie Anne McKee, Mary B. McKinley, James F. McMillan, Ernan McMullin, Kathleen E. McVey, M. Douglas Meeks, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, Ilie Melniciuc-Puica, Everett Mendoza, Raymond A. Mentzer, William W. Menzies, Ina Merdjanova, Franziska Metzger, Constant J. Mews, Marvin Meyer, Carol Meyers, Vasile Mihoc, Gunner Bjerg Mikkelsen, Maria Inêz de Castro Millen, Clyde Lee Miller, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Alexander Mirkovic, Paul Misner, Nozomu Miyahira, R. W. L. Moberly, Gerald Moede, Aloo Osotsi Mojola, Sunanda Mongia, Rebeca Montemayor, James Moore, Roger E. Moore, Craig E. Morrison O.Carm, Jeffry H. Morrison, Keith Morrison, Wilson J. Moses, Tefetso Henry Mothibe, Mokgethi Motlhabi, Fulata Moyo, Henry Mugabe, Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Peggy Mulambya-Kabonde, Robert Bruce Mullin, Pamela Mullins Reaves, Saskia Murk Jansen, Heleen L. Murre-Van den Berg, Augustine Musopole, Isaac M. T. Mwase, Philomena Mwaura, Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Anne Nasimiyu Wasike, Carmiña Navia Velasco, Thulani Ndlazi, Alexander Negrov, James B. Nelson, David G. Newcombe, Carol Newsom, Helen J. Nicholson, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Tatyana Nikolskaya, Damayanthi M. A. Niles, Bertil Nilsson, Nyambura Njoroge, Fidelis Nkomazana, Mary Beth Norton, Christian Nottmeier, Sonene Nyawo, Anthère Nzabatsinda, Edward T. Oakes, Gerald O'Collins, Daniel O'Connell, David W. Odell-Scott, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Kathleen O'Grady, Oyeronke Olajubu, Thomas O'Loughlin, Dennis T. Olson, J. Steven O'Malley, Cephas N. Omenyo, Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, César Augusto Ornellas Ramos, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, Kenan B. Osborne, Carolyn Osiek, Javier Otaola Montagne, Douglas F. Ottati, Anna May Say Pa, Irina Paert, Jerry G. Pankhurst, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Samuele F. Pardini, Stefano Parenti, Peter Paris, Sung Bae Park, Cristián G. Parker, Raquel Pastor, Joseph Pathrapankal, Daniel Patte, W. Brown Patterson, Clive Pearson, Keith F. Pecklers, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, David Horace Perkins, Pheme Perkins, Edward N. Peters, Rebecca Todd Peters, Bishop Yeznik Petrossian, Raymond Pfister, Peter C. Phan, Isabel Apawo Phiri, William S. F. Pickering, Derrick G. Pitard, William Elvis Plata, Zlatko Plese, John Plummer, James Newton Poling, Ronald Popivchak, Andrew Porter, Ute Possekel, James M. Powell, Enos Das Pradhan, Devadasan Premnath, Jaime Adrían Prieto Valladares, Anne Primavesi, Randall Prior, María Alicia Puente Lutteroth, Eduardo Guzmão Quadros, Albert Rabil, Laurent William Ramambason, Apolonio M. Ranche, Vololona Randriamanantena Andriamitandrina, Lawrence R. Rast, Paul L. Redditt, Adele Reinhartz, Rolf Rendtorff, Pål Repstad, James N. Rhodes, John K. Riches, Joerg Rieger, Sharon H. Ringe, Sandra Rios, Tyler Roberts, David M. Robinson, James M. Robinson, Joanne Maguire Robinson, Richard A. H. Robinson, Roy R. Robson, Jack B. Rogers, Maria Roginska, Sidney Rooy, Rev. Garnett Roper, Maria José Fontelas Rosado-Nunes, Andrew C. Ross, Stefan Rossbach, François Rossier, John D. Roth, John K. Roth, Phillip Rothwell, Richard E. Rubenstein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Markku Ruotsila, John E. Rybolt, Risto Saarinen, John Saillant, Juan Sanchez, Wagner Lopes Sanchez, Hugo N. Santos, Gerhard Sauter, Gloria L. Schaab, Sandra M. Schneiders, Quentin J. Schultze, Fernando F. Segovia, Turid Karlsen Seim, Carsten Selch Jensen, Alan P. F. Sell, Frank C. Senn, Kent Davis Sensenig, Damían Setton, Bal Krishna Sharma, Carolyn J. Sharp, Thomas Sheehan, N. Gerald Shenk, Christian Sheppard, Charles Sherlock, Tabona Shoko, Walter B. Shurden, Marguerite Shuster, B. Mark Sietsema, Batara Sihombing, Neil Silberman, Clodomiro Siller, Samuel Silva-Gotay, Heikki Silvet, John K. Simmons, Hagith Sivan, James C. Skedros, Abraham Smith, Ashley A. Smith, Ted A. Smith, Daud Soesilo, Pia Søltoft, Choan-Seng (C. S.) Song, Kathryn Spink, Bryan Spinks, Eric O. Springsted, Nicolas Standaert, Brian Stanley, Glen H. Stassen, Karel Steenbrink, Stephen J. Stein, Andrea Sterk, Gregory E. Sterling, Columba Stewart, Jacques Stewart, Robert B. Stewart, Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ken Stone, Anne Stott, Elizabeth Stuart, Monya Stubbs, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, David Kwang-sun Suh, Scott W. Sunquist, Keith Suter, Douglas Sweeney, Charles H. Talbert, Shawqi N. Talia, Elsa Tamez, Joseph B. Tamney, Jonathan Y. Tan, Yak-Hwee Tan, Kathryn Tanner, Feiya Tao, Elizabeth S. Tapia, Aquiline Tarimo, Claire Taylor, Mark Lewis Taylor, Bishop Abba Samuel Wolde Tekestebirhan, Eugene TeSelle, M. Thomas Thangaraj, David R. Thomas, Andrew Thornley, Scott Thumma, Marcelo Timotheo da Costa, George E. “Tink” Tinker, Ola Tjørhom, Karen Jo Torjesen, Iain R. Torrance, Fernando Torres-Londoño, Archbishop Demetrios [Trakatellis], Marit Trelstad, Christine Trevett, Phyllis Trible, Johannes Tromp, Paul Turner, Robert G. Tuttle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Peter Tyler, Anders Tyrberg, Justin Ukpong, Javier Ulloa, Camillus Umoh, Kristi Upson-Saia, Martina Urban, Monica Uribe, Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, Richard Vaggione, Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Valliere, T. J. Van Bavel, Steven Vanderputten, Peter Van der Veer, Huub Van de Sandt, Louis Van Tongeren, Luke A. Veronis, Noel Villalba, Ramón Vinke, Tim Vivian, David Voas, Elena Volkova, Katharina von Kellenbach, Elina Vuola, Timothy Wadkins, Elaine M. Wainwright, Randi Jones Walker, Dewey D. Wallace, Jerry Walls, Michael J. Walsh, Philip Walters, Janet Walton, Jonathan L. Walton, Wang Xiaochao, Patricia A. Ward, David Harrington Watt, Herold D. Weiss, Laurence L. Welborn, Sharon D. Welch, Timothy Wengert, Traci C. West, Merold Westphal, David Wetherell, Barbara Wheeler, Carolinne White, Jean-Paul Wiest, Frans Wijsen, Terry L. Wilder, Felix Wilfred, Rebecca Wilkin, Daniel H. Williams, D. Newell Williams, Michael A. Williams, Vincent L. Wimbush, Gabriele Winkler, Anders Winroth, Lauri Emílio Wirth, James A. Wiseman, Ebba Witt-Brattström, Teofil Wojciechowski, John Wolffe, Kenman L. Wong, Wong Wai Ching, Linda Woodhead, Wendy M. Wright, Rose Wu, Keith E. Yandell, Gale A. Yee, Viktor Yelensky, Yeo Khiok-Khng, Gustav K. K. Yeung, Angela Yiu, Amos Yong, Yong Ting Jin, You Bin, Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Eliana Yunes, Robert Michael Zaller, Valarie H. Ziegler, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Aurora Zlotnik, Zhuo Xinping
- Edited by Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity
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- 05 August 2012
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- 20 September 2010, pp xi-xliv
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GENERAL INDEX
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp 284-291
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Introduction: THE TWO FACES OF AMERICA: THE IDEAL AMERICA AS DECEPTION AND AS PROTEST
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp 1-6
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Summary
In his major book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, William Blum explains why so many Americans are so ignorant of the history of their nation and have a hard time believing that it has continually intervened in the lives of other nations in destructive ways. ‘…It is because the American people see and hear their leaders expressing the right concern at the right time, with just the right catch in their throat to convey, “I care!” they see them laughing and telling jokes, see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and freedom – it is because of such things that the idea that our government has done to the world's huddled masses what it did to the Seminoles has such a difficult time penetrating the American consciousness. It's like America has an evil twin.’
This book, with its double name, America, Amerikkka, is about that double identity of America. It is about the ideology of God and love, peace and law, democracy and freedom, and the evil twin that is concealed behind this rhetoric of positive national values and beliefs. This concealment could not happen if it were not that Americans genuinely believe in these national values, and they believe that American actions in the world are motivated by and express these values. Moreover, American leaders know that they touch a deep root of national faith when they use these words.
Dedication
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp v-vi
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America Amerikkka
- Elect Nation and Imperial Violence
- Rosemary Radford Ruether
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007
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America views itself as a nation inhabiting a 'promised land' and enjoying a favoured relation with God. This view of unique election has been coupled with racial exclusivism and the marginalization of non-white citizens. America, Amerikkka traces the historical and ideological patterns behind America's sense of itself. In its examination of America's 'chosenness', the book ranges across the doctrine of the 'rights of man' in the 18th and 19th centuries, the role of America in the twentieth century as 'global policeman', and the enforcement of neo-colonial relations over the 'third world'. The volume argues for a vision of global relations between peoples based on justice and mutuality, rather than hegemonic dominance.
Chapter Seven - ALTERNATIVE VISIONS OF AMERICA: THE PROTEST TRADITION
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp 211-249
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Summary
The claim that the United States is an elect nation chosen by God to dominate and redeem the world has deep roots in the Puritan traditions of the seventeenth century. These ideas of U.S. America's messianic role have been continually retooled to justify new imperial adventures. But the connections between visions of America as a people with a mission to the world and American imperial power have always existed in some contradiction with each other. Many Americans have rejected the idea of empire as ‘un-American,’ and imperialists have gone about their expansionist activities by constantly denying that they were engaged in building an empire.
Thus there had developed early on, from the time of the Indian wars to the Mexican American War to the Spanish American War to today a deep disconnect between what Americans think they have been about in their history and how other people, especially those on the underside of American imperial power, have actually experienced America. This also means that most Americans do not know their own history, particularly this ‘underside’ of American history. American ideologies justify military and economic expansion by speaking in an idealistic language of promoting ‘freedom’ that conceals what they are actually doing from the perspective of conquered and colonized peoples.
But this self-deception has always had its critics. In every generation there have risen up prophetic witnesses, sometimes loners, sometimes speaking for major movements, who seek to unmask this self-deception.
Chapter Three - MANIFEST DESTINY AND ANGLO-SAXON RACISM — 1815-1875
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp 70-99
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In the mid-1830s to 1850s the United States saw a rapid territorial expansion across the continent. From thirteen colonies that hugged the Atlantic coast, in little more than a half century the nation had come to span the continent ‘from sea to shining sea.’ These developments shaped a new formulation of an American aggressive nationalism that drew on older elements of belief in divine election and the mandate to be democracy's ‘light to the nations’ with enlarged expansionist zeal. The term ‘Manifest Destiny,’ coined by New York journalist John Louis O'Sullivan in 1845, came to epitomize this new form of the vision of America's providential calling and mission.
Manifest Destiny and WASP Exclusivity
O'Sullivan coined the phrase first to justify the annexation of Texas as a state of the union. He advocated such annexation not only against opposition groups from within the U.S., but also from Mexico, who saw such annexation as a causi belli, and the efforts of the English to negotiate a sphere of influence for itself by maintaining the permanent independence of the Lone Star State. O'Sullivan later that year used the phrase again to argue for American expansion into the Oregon Territory against the British claims to the area. The superiority of the American claim to the Oregon Territory, O'Sullivan declared, was ‘by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.’
Contents
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp vii-viii
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Chapter Five - AMERICA'S GLOBAL MISSION: THE COLD WAR ERA, 1945-89
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- America Amerikkka
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- Acumen Publishing
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- 05 June 2014
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- 30 September 2007, pp 136-172
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For more than forty years two rival empires, identified with two rival ideologies, confronted one another across bristling shields of deadly weapons capable of destroying the peoples of the earth many times over. Each defined themselves in messianic terms as saviors of the world's peoples against a deadly foe. The U.S. saw itself as the leader of the ‘free world,’ champion of freedom and democracy, against an evil system of totalitarian repression and slavery. The Soviets saw themselves as the leader of an ‘inevitable’ process of world transformation from capitalist exploitation of the workers to socialist equality, over against a United States that had taken up the banner of European imperialism at a time when that system was dying.
Stages in the Cold War
The period from 1945 to 1989 was not one of uniform hostility. It took several years after the end of the Second World War for the wartime alliance of the U.S. and Western Europe with the Soviet Union to be redefined as one of unrelenting antagonism. After the death of Stalin in 1953 until the late sixties there was some relaxing of tensions followed by renewed periods of hostility. The period from 1969-1979 was one of détente in which both sides pursued negotiations to resolve major issues of dispute, particularly the nuclear arms race. SALT I, (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) signed by President Nixon and Soviet leader Brezhnev in 1972, ended the race to develop defensive antiballistic missile systems (AMBs) and froze the number of nuclear missiles to 1,600 on the Soviet side and 1,054 on the U.S. side.
Frontmatter
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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Chapter Two - THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND THE EXCLUDED OTHERS — THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA AND BEYOND
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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Summary
The founders of the godly commonwealths came to North America to pursue their vision of the true church and society, but they had no more intention of including Christians of other views in their communities than the English establishment was willing to include them. Both shared an exclusive view of the true church coterminous with the nation, or, in the case of the Puritan settlers, coterminous with their own covenanted community. From the beginning of the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay colony, there were clashes with Christians of other persuasions.
Catholics were, of course, totally excluded as the demonic alien of the Puritan worldview, and the French Catholic settlement to the North was regarded as its sworn enemy. Anglicans were looked on with suspicion and classified as dissenters in New England. When the Church of England developed the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701 to evangelize the colonies, and especially when there was talk of founding an American episcopacy, this was seen as part of an English conspiracy to subject the Puritans of Massachusetts to the joint power of bishops and crown. There were also constant efforts by the Puritan divines to exclude any tendency toward Presbyterianism in their midst.
Separatists and more radical dissenters were rigorously excluded. The Separatists of Plymouth colony were regarded with suspicion, but since they were a self-governing colony, the Massachusetts ministry and magistracy had no direct jurisdiction over them.
Chapter Six - AMERICAN EMPIRE AND ITS DENOUEMENT: 1990-2007
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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For military and political leaders shaped by forty years of Cold War with its polarization of the world into the spheres of ‘freedom’ and ‘tyranny,’ the collapse of the Soviet Union was both unsettling and unwelcome, despite the rapidity with which they claimed an American ‘victory’ won through unrelenting economic and military pressure on the ‘enemy.’ In order to avert the ‘threat’ of a ‘peace dividend,’ with its demands for a scaling down of the American military in favor of rebuilding social services at home and responding to social needs abroad, new enemies needed to be found that could be defined as equally dangerous to that of the former USSR and hence demanding equivalent global American military and police power. In a revelatory moment, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs Colin Powell quipped, ‘I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.’
New Demands for Military Expansion
During the George H.W. Bush Administration in the early 1990s military planners were at work crafting a new rationale for U.S. military expansion post-Cold War. Early in 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of Defense for Policy, circulated a draft of the current Defense Planning Guide which frankly acknowledged that America was now the sole superpower and should shape its defense planning to assure its permanent preeminence over the entire globe, not only defeating existing competitors for global power, but projecting such overwhelming power that any potential competitors would be convinced that ‘they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.’
Chapter One - ELECT NATIONS OF EUROPE AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN MYTH OF CHOSENNESS
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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Summary
The Christian Bible combines the literatures of two religious communities, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The second claims to inherit, perfect and supersede the first, yet the relation between the two remains in constant tension and reinterpretation within Christianity. One of these themes of reinterpretation is the idea of an elect nation, God's chosen people. For the ancient Hebrews, as well as the Jewish people through the ages, the chosen people are Israel, a particular people created by a religiously defined ethnicity. Israel is those who covenant with the God of Israel to be his people, yet Jewishness is also an inherited ethnicity. This national God gave his people the law as a way of life through whose observance obedience to God is fulfilled.
This God also promised his people a land and a flourishing future in relation to all the other nations in the Middle East. But these promises remained continually postponed. The people of Israel were a small nation or federation of tribes, who only in brief periods were politically independent and ruled over a few neighboring tribes. For most of their history to the first century BCE they were ruled by other empires. After the Jewish Wars of 66-73 CE and 132-36 CE, the Jews were scattered in or migrated to other areas within and beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.
Chapter Eight - TOWARD A U.S. THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION AND LETTING GO
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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In 1977, Sister Marie Augusta Neal wrote a short book called A Socio-Theology of Letting Go. This book made a strong impression on me since it seemed to articulate the other side of a liberation theology, the side of a liberation theology addressed to those who are holding oppressive power over others. For those who are oppressed to be liberated, those who hold oppressive power must ‘let go’ (or must be made to let go), must relax their grip on domination and so others can go free. Ultimately a transformation of both sides must take place so there is no more poor and rich, oppressed and oppressors, elect and non-elect, privileged and nonprivileged, but a new society where all members enjoy dignity and access to the basic means of life. This is the ‘civilización de pobreza’ which martyred Jesuit theologian Ignacio Ellacuría spoke about in the last years of his life, a phrase which might be translated a ‘civilization of simple living.’
In this concluding chapter I will articulate something of what a theology of letting go might mean for North American power-holders, which would also be a theology of liberation, not only for dominated and impoverished peoples of countries victimized by the rich and powerful of the United States, but also for the vast majority of the people of the United States itself.
Chapter Four - MANIFEST DESTINY AND AMERICAN EMPIRE: 1890-1934
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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The last decade of the nineteenth century saw key turning points in a number of trends in American society. The frontier was seen as closing, ending the era of free land to the West. The two excluded peoples, Indigenous Americans and African-Americans, experienced a low point in their mistreatment. The Dawes Act (1887) and the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) sought to eliminate American Indians as a separate and resistant people to American expansion. The Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) confirmed the legality of Jim Crow segregation (see Chapter Two). At the same time immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe poured into the United States, presenting a new ethnic and religious diversity that was seen as highly unwelcome by those who called themselves ‘native’ Americans; i.e., white Northern European Protestants.
From the 1870s there was rapid urbanization and industrialization. The railroads, electricity, motion pictures, cable cars and petroleum began to transform daily life. Huge fortunes were made by a few, while the vast majority labored long hours in oppressive conditions for just a few dimes an hour. A few hundred men held fortunes of over $1 million, while more than 80 per cent of the U.S. working population made less than $500 a year. Farmers saw a sharp decline in commodity prices, while the high prices charged by railroads and food corporations left them in chronic debt.
INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, Claremont Graduate University, California
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- 30 September 2007, pp 276-282
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