Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Contents of Volume 55 (2020)
Fall 2020 Vol. 55.4
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Special Issue: Reflections on Religion and Race in the Era of Trumpism
Guest Editors: Edwin David Aponte and Laura Levitt
Introduction
Edwin David Aponte
The following essays had earlier expressions in two biennial meetings of the Society of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in 2017 and 2019, and, as might be expected, all examine aspects of the multilayered and often complex relationships between and among race, ethnicity, and religion. Such exploration is not solely an intellectual exercise, but it is increasingly a necessary thing to do–not only for deeper understanding of these issues themselves but also for addressing many of the moral and public policy challenges of our times. Of course, exploring the connections and intersections among concepts of race, ethnicity, and religion and spirituality within particular contexts of the United States is important in its own right, but such study also addresses the concerns of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies for ongoing and meaningful dialogue among diverse religious traditions.
Analogies Otherwise: A Relational Reading of Racialization, Alliance Politics, and Revolutionary Love
Laura Levitt
This essay is a modified version of a talk I gave in the Fall of 2017 at the Biennial Conference of the Society of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee. I spoke these words not long after white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. The theme of the gathering was "Revolutionary Love." I was invited to address this issue after I wrote a blog post raising questions about revolutionary love and the categories of race, religion, and ethnicity. Specifically, I wrote about these matters for scholars of religion engaged with the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Returning to these remarks in the Winter of 2020, the urgency of my concerns could not be any more relevant. What follows is, more or less, what I wrote then. My hope is that these reflections will resonate with some of the powerful words of a younger generation of scholars' works on issues of religion, ethnicity, and race—versions of some of the papers that were presented at the association's preconference biennial meeting at the AAR in San Diego, California, in November, 2019.
Postcolonial Solidarities: Oriental Orthodox Kinship in an Age of Migration
Candace Lukasik
This essay attends to contemporary Oriental Orthodox solidarity as a postcolonial condition and to the possibilities of communal belonging along different planes of theopolitical intelligibility. Oriental Orthodox debates around what I call the "social hierarchy of theological truth" are mired in colonial histories of civilizational order and the production of the collective experience of Byzantine and Islamic subjugation. The project of making Oriental Orthodox experience visible in the contemporary moment as perennial persecution and perpetual subjugation hinders analysis of the workings of this neo-imperial system that utilizes certain narratives of Oriental Orthodox while precluding the collective's historicity and its enmeshment in other radical frameworks of solidarity. I argue that contemporary Oriental Orthodox experience must be historicized as a means to understand the operations of the complex and changing discursive processes by which such an identity is ascribed, debated, or embraced. By historicizing the identity that such a process has produced, I ethnographically trace how such processes are unmarked in the everyday interactions of Oriental Orthodox in the United States—in the ways history, theology, and collective memory are debated and politicized in the present.
Surrogate Flesh: Race, Redemption, and the Cultural Production of Fetal Personhood
Amaryah Shaye Armstrong
The growth of fetal personhood laws has led to an increase in carceral responses to the loss of a fetus. This carceral response has had devastating racial effects. This essay situates the carceral management of reproduction within a theological mode of production and reproduction, examining how fetal personhood is culturally produced and reproduced within the context of a theology of Christian redemption and its supersessionist sense of peoplehood. I begin by situating fetal personhood within a larger discussion of Christian peoplehood and chosenness, focusing on peoplehood's relationship to political theological crises of legitimacy. In so doing, I recast political theology in light of such Black scholars as Cedric Robinson and Sylvia Wynter, showing how theological resolutions of the crises of legitimacy, meaning, and value depend on the imposition of order—ordering existence and epistemology—against the threat that Black flesh poses to the reproduction of Christian racial distinctiveness and redemption. Second, I consider how white governance supersedes Christian peoplehood as the redemptive theologic of racial modernity that legitimates claims of fetal personhood, by showing how the implicitly white conception of the human that is assumed by fetal personhood arguments recapitulates a notion of theological descent. Theological descent necessitates the proper reproduction of order through racial enforcement in order to secure human redemption. Finally, I draw on the insights of my analysis to perform a political theological reading of anti-abortion advertisements and billboards specifically figuring Black children as "an endangered species," showing how these ads make the fetus and not Black lives the victim of this endangerment. I argue that these are personhood arguments, and, as such, they deploy a Christian redemptive imagination to conjure and capture the living image of Black children, who are made into surrogates for the anti-abortion movements' redemptive politics. As such, they attribute blameworthiness to Black wombs and use systemic racism to produce a blameless fetus. Racism becomes a way of re-blaming Black people for racism. In thinking of race and reproduction together in an examination of the cultural production of fetal personhood, I show how the larger political theological attempt to impose order and governance on Black flesh serves to resolve crises of existential and epistemological meaning and value. The legitimation of carceral enforcement in response to abortion and Black reproduction is thus a means of preserving an anti-Black political theology. This theological redemptive order, in turn, is set over and against the disorder that Black flesh and sexuality represent.
The Hybrid Aesthetics of Korean Evangelical Christianity
Minjung Noh
This essay explores the multiple layers of aesthetics in Korean Protestant Christianity, moving between South Korea, the United States, and Haiti, where Korean Protestant Christians began establishing missions in 1992. Following the transnational itineraries of Korean and Korean American Protestants, I will identify two distinct but not mutually exclusive orientations of their aesthetics. The first is an aesthetics of progress, which has been prominent since the inception of Protestant Christianity in Korea. The second is an aesthetics of Koreanness.
Ganja Struggles: Rastafari and the Contestation for Cannabis Rights in Jamaica
Randy R. Goldson
This essay examines the theological and socioeconomic impacts of the creation of the Jamaican marijuana industry on the Rastafari faith in Jamaica and, mainly, how Rastas are navigating the forces of governmental regulation and global capitalist control of the holy herb. I argue that the scope of the Rastafari reactions to the dominating force of cannabis legislation in Jamaica is fundamentally a function of their longstanding precarious status in Jamaica. Rastas' rejection of the colonial and postcolonial state, proclamation of black redemption, deification of Emperor Haile Selassie I, and sacralization of marijuana brought them into conflict with the state, thereby reinforcing their liminal position as an "other." Throughout this essay, I draw upon the themes of postcolonial theory to understand the history of colonial and postcolonial legislative repression of Rastafari and how Rastas have deployed strategies of resistance and survival within and against the Jamaican society.
Postcolonial Theology and Intersectionality
Grace Ji-Sun Kim
Many two-thirds-world Christian theologians have turned to postcolonial theory as a more indigenous theoretical way of addressing the sinful effects of colonialism in its various manifestations. These theologians employ, in particular, the postcolonial concept of hybridity as a way of accounting for the complicated political agency of the "subaltern" (oppressed) subject. This concept emerged out of the postcolonial experience to describe the ways in which subaltern subjects sometimes embrace and confront the "master's tools" when constructing new postcolonial identities. What could look like support of the oppressor may, in fact, be a complex process of formulating and activating subaltern agency in relation to colonialist as well as indigenous cultural practices, languages, attitudes, and religions. This essay argues that these are forms of intersectional theologizing.
ARTICLE
Reciprocal Inclusivism: A Methodology for Understanding the Faiths of the World
Christopher C. Knight
Based on John Hick's pluralistic hypothesis that Reality is ineffable and beyond adequate comprehension, but the presence of this Reality can be experienced through the linguistic systems and spiritual practices offered by the various religious traditions, this essay explores the place of such a hypothesis in the face of contemporary understandings of religious pluralism, in particular perennialist assumptions about religious differences. The essay aims to place the criticisms and strengths of traditional perennialism in the context of the thinking of two schools of theological thought. The first is embodied in the work of Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) whose understanding of apophaticism is based on patristic Christian insights and remains influential within the Eastern Orthodox Church. The second is the school of thought associated with the names of René Guénon (1886–1951) and Fritzjof Schuon (1907–98), which is referred to sometimes as the Traditionalist school or as perennial traditionalism.
Summer 2020 Vol. 55.3
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Symposium on the Pittsburgh Shabbat Massacre: Reversing Evil to Love
Zev Garber
Zev Garber combined the `Aḳedah narrative and the Pittsburgh synagogue slaughter and dramatized in oral torah the absolute faith of Abraham and the realized fate of Jews in prayer on Shabbat morning. He raised ethical and moral issues of justice and mercy associated with this absolute biblical test of faith and the lasting influence on the lives and souls of loyalist Jews and others to the Covenant of Abraham. However, Garber's written torah elaborates on old-new language of hate and violence (Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinianism, Israeli nationalism) that somewhat parallels, contributes to, and prevails alongside the Pittsburgh Shabbat Massacre.
The Pittsburgh Shabbat Massacre—Terms of Depiction and Destruction: Old-New Usage
Zev Garber
Language is a reciprocal tool: It reveals, and, at the same time, it is revealing. We use language to explain the things that define our world, but, by the same token, the way we use language also necessarily discloses how we explain and define ourselves within that world. In general, everyone can instinctively grasp how a given word or phrase is used to demarcate, even create, that small bit of universe that it encompasses in linguistic terms. But, the subtle aspects of how this same word or phrase might disclose a part of our own identities is less obvious and is less consciously considered in the old-new language of hate and violence. How and why are reflected in this essay that expounds on like and dislike of group-people-religion identity and that somewhat parallels, contributes to, and prevails alongside the Pittsburgh Shabbat Massacre
Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Justly? Theological Dilemmas Posed by the Pittsburgh and Poway Synagogue Massacres
Kenneth L. Hanson
There is an immutable framework of biblical faith, expressed in Israelite monotheism, namely, that God is both all-powerful and all-just. Such divine attributes, however, have been called into question throughout the course of Jewish history and experience, from earliest antiquity, through the annihilation of European Jewry in the twentieth century, and down to the present. The dual tragedies of the recent synagogue massacres, both in Pittsburgh (October 27, 2018) and at Poway (April 27, 2019), have brought a renewed focus to the most fundamental theodic question regarding the goodness of God in an imperfect world. It is tragically ironic that the weekly parasha read in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue on the day of the carnage was VaYera' (Genesis 18–22), containing (in addition to the 'Aḳedah) the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham's pointed question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?" Eventually, it would be the Israelites themselves who would reshape the divine image from that of a tribal deity, known as the "God of Armies" in the account of the Exodus from Egypt, to a transcendent emblem of compassion. They would eventually address the troublesome theological issues revolving around divine justice with a powerfully "subversive" treatise of Israelite wisdom literature, the Book of Job, wherein we find two poetic and elegant answers to Abraham's question and to the perennial problem of evil.
Jouissance and Trauma in Sarah's Laugh and Aporia: The Construction of Collective Identity in the Parshat VaYera'
Roberta Sabbath
VaYera' begins with Sarah's laughter at the announcement of her future maternity. Later she laughs in what seems a self-deprecatory manner at Isaac's birth and her nursing the child. Sarah also speaks. God listens. She insists that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham resists. God insists that he listen to Sarah. Then Sarah goes silent—a traumatic textual aporia. Bereishit Rabbah and midrashic tannaim suggest a one-dimensional reading of a Sarah bereft at the impending sacrifice of Isaac. Yet, a close reading of VaYera' reveals a powerful woman of royal lineage and priestly powers who brings and withdraws fertility, emboldens and enriches Abraham, and demonstrates agency not typically assigned to biblical women. By considering Sarah not as handmaiden but priestess, not as possession but as princess, and not as victim but as victor, we recognize a Sarah whose passion for life, family, and love determined that a divine call to human sacrifice would not be her legacy. The Abrahamic deity would be worshiped with life, not death. God and Abraham may have listened to Sarah. We gain hope from her wisdom and remember our humanity in the face of inhumanity. As instruction for collective identity in the face of trauma, Sarah teaches us to laugh and to cry, to live and to love, and to act and to rejoice together.
Dancing at "the People's Beach": Spontaneous Dialogue in the New York Sands
Carolyn Renée Pautz
Scholars of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue have largely ignored religions of African derivation in the Americas, such as Candomblé, Vodou, and Santería. This essay contributes to a resultant lacunae in the academic literature in these fields by using ethnography and performance theory (approaches that are also largely unknown in said fields) to illustrate the function of a spontaneous interreligious dialogue on a New York beach between Haitian Vodouists and Freemasons, one that effectively enhanced interfaith understanding on the popular level, as witnessed by a Lucumí priestess and scholar.
Lebanon Models Interreligious Dialogue through the Feast of the Annunciation
Ziad Fahed
This essay explores how Lebanon is modeling interreligious dialogue through the Christian-Muslim celebration of the Annunciation of Mary. It highlights the importance of dialogue in both religions and analyzes the theological foundations of the Feast of the Annunciation. While identifying the commonalities and the main differences in approaching this feast, the essay discusses the challenges that this initiative is facing and explores some practical opportunities to counteract extremism. The methodology utilized in this study is textual analysis, particularly based on the Sacred Scriptures, as well as the writings of researchers and practitioners of interreligious dialogue. It concludes that, among the several forms of interreligious dialogue, the Feast of the Annunciation of Mary offers a pioneering platform that facilitates bridging over misunderstandings in order to deepen spiritual solidarity by celebrating a common spiritual heritage and appreciating differences.
Two Sides of One Coin: Hillul Hashem and Kiddush Hashem
Gilbert S. Rosenthal
Hillul Hashem, the desecration of God's name, and Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of God's name, are two of the most important moral principles of Judaism. Derived from biblical sources and greatly expanded by the sages, they are really two sides of one coin. Hillul Hashem constitutes a public action by a Jew that brings disgrace to God's reputation and sullies the good name of Israel. Actions of Kiddush Hashem exalt God's holy name, add honor and prestige to the Jewish people, and constitute the antidote to Hillul Hashem. The author analyzes how these concepts evolved through the ages. Most people erroneously believe that Kiddush Hashem implies martyrdom for Jewish principles (such as Rabbi Akiva). While martyrdom is the ultimate action of Kiddush Hashem, numerous sources are cited that stress that unjust, immoral, or unethical behavior vis-à-vis Jews and gentiles constitute Hillul Hashem. The author stresses that Israel's mission is to set an example for all nations and faiths to sanctify God's name through justice, honesty, and moral behavior for all peoples.
Questions about Paul's Gospel of Justification
Paul W. Newman
The Pauline gospel of justification is a major factor in current ecumenical discussions between Catholic and Protestant churches. The doctrine needs to be tested by the life and teachings of Jesus, who was centered on the Reign of God. Issues challenging justification by means of retributive justice are the doctrine of return that is central to the prophetic tradition, the emphasis of Jesus on the bilateral covenantal law of love for neighbors and enemies, the discrediting of death penalties in the world, the widespread emulation of Jesus' compassion, the inability of many modern people to believe in a scapegoat logic of forgiveness, and the desperate need of the world for the gospel of the Reigning of God.
REVIEWS
Juden und Christen—das eine Volk Gottes by Walter Kasper (review)
Leonard Swidler
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other ed. by Emma Polyakov O'Donnell (review)
Zev Garber
Beyond "Holy Wars": Forging Sustainable Peace through Interreligious Dialogue—A Christian Perspective by Christoffer H. Grundmann (review)
Rob Arner
RSM, Women, the Holocaust, and Genocide by Carol Rittner (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
Spring 2020 Vol. 55.2
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Introduction: Towards a New Détente: Ecumenical Outreach and Interfaith Dialogue in an Age of Uncertainty
William P. McDonald
This is a report of the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, held September 27–29, 2019, at The Sign of the Theotokas Orthodox Church in Montreal. The theme involves the interface of ecumenical outreach and interfaith dialogue, within the contemporary social and intellectual context. The meeting featured four Canadian and two U.S. speakers from academia and/or grassroots practitioners who have had experience in both ecumenical and interfaith work.
Authors in This Special Section
Ecumenical Outreach and Interfaith Dialogue in Montreal
Adriana Bara
This Romanian-born author heads the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism and teaches at Concordia University, both in Montreal. She describes the sociopolitical concept of ecumenical cooperation and multicultural and interfaith concerns in Montreal and throughout Canada. She emphasizes the need for humility and love among Christians and in their meeting with persons of other faiths.
Interfaith Dialogue at the End of Christendom: The Scriptures of My Dialogue Partners
Patricia G. Kirkpatrick
This McGill University professor discusses the implications of openness to dialogue for both academic and personal development. She urges that interfaith interactions should include the encounter of one another's scriptures for authentic dialogue to occur. She also discusses a "fractal" theory of religious diversity, which needs to go beyond mere tolerance.
Christian Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue: Convergences and Divergences
Paul Ladouceur
This essay discusses how Christian ecumenism and interreligious theology and dialogue may benefit from each other. Beginning with overviews of points of concurrence among world religions and typologies of Christian attitudes toward world religions, it explores the relevance to interreligious dialogue of key notions from ecumenical experience: the identification of appropriate dialogue partners, the importance of understanding the other, "purification of memory," ecumenical and interreligious "gift exchange," personal friendship, and common prayer. Some types of unity sought in Christian ecumenism are relevant in interreligious dialogue, while others are not. Particular obstacles in interreligious dialogue are less significant in ecumenism: interreligious violence, the politicization of religious identity, the "dilution" of religious beliefs, and risks of Christian relativism. Lessons relevant to interreligious understanding and dialogue are sought in the works of Fr. Lev Gillet and Christina Mangala Frost.
Paths to Wholeness: Comparative Theology and the Ecumenical Project
S. Mark Heim
This essay explores four main points in outlining the changing relation between ecumenism and interfaith engagement. First, it describes an ironic shift: Where once world mission was the common motive for Christian ecumenical engagement, now differences among Christians over response to religious diversity are themselves of church-dividing status. Second, it argues there is a new urgency for ecumenism as the necessary resource for adequate engagement with the religions—a new way for religious diversity to motivate ecumenism. Third, the essay traces the development of comparative theology as the appropriate theological resource for this new engagement. Fourth, it describes the convergence toward a trinitarian theology as a common element that marks both the recent ecumenical movement and the newer response to religious diversity.
Milestones and Peak Experiences in My Long Ecumenical Journey
John George Huber
This is the banquet address by a ninety-year-old Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor and campus minister with long involvement in ecumenical dialogue around the world. He describes his involvement in intra-Lutheran to World Council of Churches events in which he participated over more than six decades.
Canadian Ecumenical Activity and the Rise of "Nones": Is There Any Relationship?
Michael Attridge
ARTICLES:
Social Justice and Rituals of Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Perspectives from African Religion and Roman Catholic Christianity
SimonMary Aihiokhai
This essay intentionally seeks ways that some insights and rituals of forgiveness of sin in African Religion can enrich the theology and sacramental celebrations of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation in the Roman Catholic Church. A case is made for the celebration of this sacrament to represent the cultural contexts of each local church in ways that heighten their appreciation for it.
New Ecclesial Movements in the Church: Signs of Hope for Ecumenical Spiritual Unity
Reginald Alva
In the contemporary world, there is a conspicuous lack of interest in religions among people due to secularization, loss of societal values, and distrust of organized religions. The increasing number of scandals and abuses by the hierarchy further aggravates the situation. The division among Christians because of doctrinal differences gives rise to scandals, which are counter-gospel. The new ecclesial movements, which began just before and after the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church, work not only for the revitalization of faith but alsofor promoting genuine ecumenical dialogue with other Christian denominations. This essay examines two ecclesial movements—the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement and the Focolare Movement—that practice and promote ecumenical dialogue at the practical level, thereby contributing to spiritual unity among all Christians. The resources for this study are the documents of the Catholic Church and documents on these two movements.
This essay provides a presentation of the study document, Theology of Diaspora, from the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe and describes how the document refers to the diaspora situation of Protestant communities as both challenge and opportunity. It then pleads for an ecumene that discovers religious identities in diaspora situations as an important topic of theological academic reflection. Finally, it pleads for an ambiguity-sensitive approach, which values the interrelatedness, hybridity, and variety of religious identities in the twenty-first century.
EXPLORATIONS AND RESPONSES:
Role of Religions in the Spread of COVID-19
David Emmanuel Singh
We are ordinarily disposed to look for evidence of the positive role religions play in society. Religion, as Durkheim posited, is a "force" that activates a sense of obligation in the faithful to reach beyond self. This impulse usually results in positive action and behavior. This essay, however, brings together exceptional cases that cut across religions where the ordinary functionalist positivity gives way to negative behavior.
Yoga, Meditation, and Mysticism: Contemplative Universals and Meditative Landmarks by Kenneth Rose (review)
Paul Knitter
To submit an article for consideration, log on to our administrative platform, Scholastica, at jes.scholasticahq.com.
Winter 2020 Vol. 55.1
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Introduction: Racialized Violence and the Churches’ Responsibility
Adam Ployd
The essays in this special issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies arose out of the work of the “Violence in an Age of Genocide” study group, part of the National Council of Churches Faith and Order Convening Table. In light of the proliferation of extrajudicial killings of people of color in the United States—Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and too many more to name—the majority of these essays address racialized violence against Black people in the U.S. Similarly, these essays are also often directed toward the “white church,” broadly defined, and its need to engage these issues more critically, both theologically and practically. As we reflected on these tragedies, however, another crisis began to form—or, rather, to enter a new stage—on America’s southern border as Latinx families continue to be separated, with frightened children held in makeshift internment camps. Therefore, a few essays also address the racialized violence associated with the U.S. immigration system.
ARTICLES
Interfaith and Racist Violence and Genocide: Definitions, Contexts, and Theology
Antonios Kireopoulos
Religious communities have historically been involved to one extent or another in genocide. Christian churches are no exception. Sometimes they are complicit in the violence; sometimes they are its victims. In recent years, when extreme violence seems to confront us continually, whether in one place or another, whether at a particular moment of crisis or painfully over time, many have been quick to designate the violence as genocide. But, do they meet the high bar set by the international community’s definition of genocide? And, what is the church’s response to be? This essay seeks to start a conversation aimed at answering these questions.
Deception, Blinders, and the Truth: On Recognizing and Acknowledging Racism and Its Violence
Matthew D. Lundberg
This essay analyzes what is involved in structures and patterns of racism that are obvious to one community and yet easily overlooked by another. It contends that this has to do partly with Western culture’s broader postmodern difficulty with truth and partly with the cherished legitimacy of the very institutions that are subtly affected by racism. At a more theological level, it argues that our often unwitting involvement in structural racism may make us susceptible to deception and self-deception regarding the truth about racism in American life. Knowing the truth and exposing our sins against the truth are important if the churches of the United States are going to contribute to the healing of American racism.
What Makes a Martyr? The Movement for Black Lives and the Power of Rhetoric Old and New*
Adam Ployd
This essay explores the question of what makes a martyr by placing the early Christian discourse on martyrdom in conversation with the protest and commemoration practices surrounding recent killings of persons of color by United States law enforcement. It argues that white Christians, who are often skeptical of the application of martyrial language to the victims of such racialized violence, ought to be open to the theological significance of such practices. Doing so will allow us to learn new ways of understanding and participating in God’s justice and victory over the forces of death in our world.
Framework for Understanding Structural Racism: The Cult of Purity
Rebecca Cohen
There is hardly any disagreement in calling racism evil, but how can we express this theologically when racism reaches beyond personal, individual acts to a pre-existing, all- encompassing system? In Catholic theology, language of sin does not relate to the reality of systematic racism. This essay proposes recovering an understanding of ritual purity that lies at the root of the Christian tradition. While Christian theology has never been entirely comfortable with language of purity, the historical and sociological elements help explain the mechanisms by which systematic racism functions as a structure of sin.
Reclaiming Reconciliation: The Corruption of “Racial Reconciliation” and How It Might Be Reclaimed for Racial Justice and Unity
Douglas A. Foster
The term “racial reconciliation” has been rejected by many committed anti-racist Christians for multiple reasons. Racial harmony and equity never existed in the United States and, therefore, cannot be restored. Furthermore, popular understandings of reconciliation imply that all sides must admit guilt, when in reality white people created the myth of white supremacy to further their economic, political, and social goals. Th is essay admits that, while these issues are serious, reconciliation is central to Christian theology and unity. The writer describes two essential components for reclaiming the concept for use in promoting racial equity and unity.
The Intersection of Palestine with Ferguson, Missouri
James R. Thomas
Is there intersectionality between the batt es waged against state-sponsored violence and oppression on the streets of Gaza and the streets of Ferguson, Missouri? This essay examines and compares events in Gaza called Operation Protective Edge to a police crackdown on protest movements in Ferguson, both occurring in 2014. The military action in Gaza launched by the Israel Defense Forces was a reaction to the murder of three teens in Hebron. In Ferguson 18- year-old Michael Brown was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson. The murder of Michael Brown triggered a national wakefulness to the ways policing affects communities of color. Brown’s death came less than a month after a New York Police Department officer used a chokehold on Eric Garner in New York City. The deaths of these two black men was a breaking point in a summer where telephone video and eyewitness descriptions of police violence drew national attention. In Ferguson, protesters rallied by the Black Lives Matter movement ignited the Ferguson Uprising, a series of protests where residents—the preponderance of them black, many of them working-class or low-income—called attention to questions that had long been present in parts of the St. Louis suburb: poverty, inequality, and police violence. The protests were met with police who were wearing elite killing gear similar to that of the Israel Defense Force. The Ferguson protests both added momentum to the national Black Lives Matter movement and generated offense from people angered by TV coverage of protesters who hurled rocks and insults at police. The end game of policing in Gaza and Ferguson is the same. The objective is to suppress the right to free assembly, expression, and association. The mission is to stop unarmed people from protesting against their oppression.
Interrogating the Legal/Illegal Frame: Trump Administration Immigration Policy and the Christian Response
Matthew A. Shadle
Statements on immigration by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, and the latter’s member communions all counter a simplistic moral distinction between those who immigrate to the United States legally and those who come illegally by addressing the social and economic factors spurring migration, identifying the flaws in the U.S. immigration system, and calling for solidarity between citizens and immigrants, regardless of legal status. The immigration and refugee policies of the Trump administration, however, reveal that the rhetorical distinction between “legal” and “illegal” has less to do with the law than it does with the arbitrary exercise of power and reinforcing racial hierarchies. The churches must learn to address this darker side of anti-immigrant rhetoric more adequately.
Sacred Spaces, Loving Vínculos, and God’s Reign of Justice: The Church’s Response to Undocumented Migrants as Mass Incarceration
Loida I. Martell
This redacted essay provides a vision of the Reign (basileia) of God in response to the crisis of the mass incarceration of migrants, particularly those considered “undocumented.” It argues that, created in the image of the triune God, we are made to live in vínculos (intimate ties that bind), or perichoretic ties, with our neighbors. Mass incarceration violates these ties. Drawing on biblical notions of justice, particularly to the stranger, this essay ultimately argues that the church is called to be a hospitable community of holistic vínculos in eschatological anticipation of the realm.
Interreligious Dialogue? Interfaith Relations? Or, Perhaps Some Other Term?
Christopher Evan Longhurst
In the mix of discussions on diverse religions in dialogue, the terms “inter-faith” and “interreligious” seem to be used rather arbitrarily. Most people involved in interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations fail to distinguish clearly between them, and even the plethora of literature on interreligious and interfaith studies uses these terms rather fluidly and interchangeably. Specialized lexica also offer no clear distinction in their meanings.
This reflection seeks to offer some amplification of the terms “interreligious dialogue” and “interfaith relations,” asking what, if anything, differentiates them. Are these terms alone sufficient for a comprehensive and inclusive global dialogue around diverse religions?
A Christian’s Experience of a Muslim Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Helene Ijaz
A Roman Catholic, I recently joined a Muslim group on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, along with my Muslim husband of fifty years. The trip included visits to sacred sites in Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. Our first visit was to what Jews refer to as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Haram esh-Sharif or the Al-Aqsa Compound. Located on a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem, surrounded by massive stone walls, it has for thousands of years been venerated as a holy site by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, religious sentiments associated with the site are being overshadowed by political tensions.
REVIEWS
Faith and Resistance in the Age of Trump ed. by Miguel De La Torre (review)
Joseph Prabhu
Yoga, Meditation, and Mysticism: Contemplative Universals and Meditative Landmarks by Kenneth Rose (review)
Paul Knitter
The Diaconate in Ecumenical Perspective: Ecclesiology, Liturgy, and Practice ed. by D. Michael Jackson (review)
Joseph A. Loya O.S.A.
Contending Catholicity: Theology for Other Baptists by Curtis W. Freeman (review)
Rob Arner
To submit an article for consideration, log on to our administrative platform, Scholastica, at jes.scholasticahq.com.
