Henry Walter Spaulding III – författare

How Sacrament and Ritual can become a site of resistance and ecological renewal.Sacraments of Liberation argues that the sacraments are central to addressing the intertwined crises of poverty and ecological degradation. Grounded in the “preferential option for the poor”—a phrase popularized by the Liberation Theologists and echoed by Pope Francis—this book presents sacraments as transformative practices that move the Church from abstract theological spaces to the embodied realities of particular places where justice and restoration occur. Responding to economic and ecological crises, this work integrates theological insights from aforementioned liberation theology, early church monk and theologian Maxim the Confessor, and the Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov with Edward Casey’s philosophical critique of modernity’s abstraction of space. It presents sacramental life as an alternative to the commodification of land, labor, and life under global capitalism. Rather than reducing the sacraments to mere symbols, it insists that their embodied practice restores community and creation. Through theological reflection and practical application, Sacraments of Liberation demonstrates how the Church’s sacramental life reclaims sacred places of justice and care, offering hope and tangible pathways for healing humanity and the earth.

In recent years, Paul has become the subject of renewed interest among political philosophers. These philosophers deploy Paul as a means to deconstruct late modern political issues such as liberalism, biopolitics, and sovereignty. However, these philosophers ultimately truncate Paul''s message to fit nontheistic, materialist ends. Such an approach polarizes interpreters, often leading either to a full endorsement or full rejection. In this work, Spaulding adds a needed voice in this conversation. By neither fully endorsing or fully rejecting the new approach to Paul, Spaulding argues that Paul''s message is both materialist and faithful to the Christian tradition. Spaulding critically utilizes both the new approach and recent studies in apocalyptic interpretations of Paul in order to articulate a Pauline political theology for our time. Pauline apocalyptic emphasizes the already disruptive nature of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that wrests humanity from under the sovereignty of the fallen powers and places them under the Lordship of Christ. Apocalyptic is nourished by the promise of the eschatological hope of the not-yet-finished work of Christ. The church that follows the Lordship of Christ is called forth into being in the tension of the present Lordship of Christ and the not-yet transformation of the cosmos. Such a tension begets practices that form the political commitment of what philosopher Iris Murdoch calls the just and loving gaze, namely the central conviction that, in order to live good (political) lives, one must be taught to see.

Christian sexual ethics operates from a place of privilege when it does not consider those impacted by its moral prescriptions. A large majority of publications on Christian sexual ethics consider choices and images abstracted from lived conditions of the people called to make these decisions. As such, it leaves out many for whom sex is neither welcome nor a choice. As such, these same texts present images of sexual subjects that marginalize those that do not fit. As the book presents, sexuality, both Christian and otherwise, prioritizes a language of purity that strangles the life of those imaged impure. The present book remedies this emphasis through the language of iconoclasm that blasphemes these images and opens theological reflection beyond the boundary of image-based approaches. Utilizing a qualitative study of survivors of trafficking and those who grew up under evangelical purity teachings, Spaulding narrates sexual ethics in light of their testimonies and the theological resources of iconoclasm to articulate a more just and loving sexuality. The new emphasis on sexual ethics not only resists the prescriptions that create the conditions of sex trafficking but the creation of new communities capable of solidarity and mutuality with those caught in the web of trafficking.