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Look Inside Blood Theology

Blood Theology
Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk

Author: Eugene F. Rogers, Jr, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Date Published: June 2021
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9781108843287

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About the Authors

The unsettling language of blood has been invoked throughout the history of Christianity. But until now there has been no truly sustained treatment of how Christians use blood to think with. Eugene F. Rogers Jr. discusses in his much-anticipated new book the sheer, surprising strangeness of Christian blood-talk, exploring the many and varied ways in which it offers a language where Christians cooperate, sacrifice, grow and disagree. He asks too how it is that blood-talk dominates when other explanations would do, and how blood seeps into places where it seems hardly to belong. Reaching beyond academic disputes, to consider how religious debates fuel civil ones, he shows that it is not only theologians or clergy who engage in blood-talk, but also lawmakers, judges, generals, doctors and voters at large. Religious arguments have significant societal consequences, Rogers contends; and for that reason secular citizens must do their best to understand them.
- Blood is central to Christian theology and iconography yet underexplored in the literature: this book finally gives it the sustained treatment the topic deserves
- Makes significant links between secularized and Christian use of blood-language, with profound and important implications for civil society and discourse
- The author is one of the foremost creative theologians in the US, whose book Sexuality and the Christian Body is widely regarded as a classic and whose work in the area of theology and sex is widely cited as groundbreaking
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Reviews & endorsements
'This book offers an exhilarating reflection on what it is to think about, with and for the sake of blood; and to so think – as it has long been thought – within the Christian tradition, but not only the Christian. Eugene Rogers' theological reflections are at all times in fruitful dialogue with those of other faiths and of other disciplines, most notably Judaism and anthropology, from which he learns and deepens his thinking. Rogers does not present a systematic reflection on blood. Rather he repeats blood's contradictions through a series of fragments: chapters that address various sites of blood's use, its spilling into social thought, into different cultural domains. Rewarding its readers with ever-deepening insight, the book is a singular and powerful work of theology that will enthral and provoke.' Gerard Loughlin, Durham University
'This book is sure to be both popular and important. The author is a distinguished theologian and philosopher. The topic is both fundamental to, yet neglected by, Christian theology: although 'blood' studies are big elsewhere in the academy, such as in anthropology and sociology. There is no other extended study of the Christian symbolics of blood – or certainly not by someone who brings together at a high level theology (Patristic, medieval and modern), social theory, post-modern philosophy and biblical studies. 'Blood' (real and symbolic) is something which, as the author points out, seeps into almost all historical theological topics: death, sacrifice, Eucharist, childbirth and creation. It is also to the fore in many contemporary concerns of the churches: debates over killing animals and eating meat, torture and – controversially – same-sex relations, racism and (somewhat unexpectedly) creationism. A good book on the Christian symbolics of blood will be important to historians, social theorists, social scientists and the like, as well as to theologians and, indeed, church authorities as they struggle with some of the issues above. In sum, this is an original and important book by one of this generation's most innovative theologians.' Janet Soskice, Duke University
'advanced scholars interested in theology, anthropology, and queer studies will find it insightful and sometimes positively inspiring … Highly recommended.' D. Jacobsen, Choice Connect
'It is a majestic work of scholarship that covers so much and makes so much strange that it will captivate and even mystify readers.' Lisa Isherwood, Scottish Journal of Theology
'… [an] exciting and insightful book.' Gaël Pardoën, The Heythrop Journal
'… a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary, inventive meditation on blood-talk in Christian thought and history written with the wry, restless, and often humorous tone of one of the more compelling theologians working today.' Travis E. Ables, Reading Religion
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Product details
- Date Published: June 2021
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108843287
- length: 254 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 157 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.51kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Part I. Why We See Red:
1. Blood marks the bounds of the body: Overtures and refrains
Part II. Blood Seeps in Where It Hardly Seems to Belong: Blood Unnecessary and Inexhaustible:
2. Blood after Isaac: Why God said 'Na'
3. Blood after Leviticus: Separation and sacrifice
4. Blood after the Last Supper: Jesus and the gender of blood
Part III. Blood Makes a Language in Which to Conduct Disputes: Family, Truth, and Tribe:
5. Bridegrooms of blood: Same-sex desire and the blood of Christ
6. Red in tooth and claw: Evolution and the blood of Christ
7. Blood purity and blood sacrifice: Castilians and Aztecs
Part IV. The Blood of God and at the Heart of Things: Causality Sacramental and Cosmic:
8. How the Eucharist causes salvation
9. Blood in the Christology of things: Why things became human
Appendix: Review of Gil Anidjar's Blood: A Critique of Christianity.
Look Inside
Author
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. is Professor of Religious Studies and of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of six books, including Aquinas and the Supreme Court (2013) and Sexuality and the Christian Body (2003), which was named 'essential reading' by Christian Century among books published in the past 25 years.