Dispatches from the New Diaspora – serie

For four decades, Marc H. Ellis has sought to rethink the Jewish tradition in light of the prophetic imperative, especially with regard to the need for geopolitical justice in the context of Israel/Palestine. Here, twenty-two contributors offer intellectual, theological, political, and journalistic insight intoEllis’s work, connecting his theological scholarship to the particularities of their own contexts. Some contributors reflect specifically on Israel/Palestine while others transfer Ellis’s theopolitical discussions to other geopolitical, cultural, or religious concerns. Yet all of them rely on Ellis’s work to understand the connections of prophetic discourses, religious demands, social movements, and projects of social justice. Paying particular attention to global racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, white supremacy, and current neocolonial practices, the contributors also address minoritized liberation theologies, the role of memory, exile and forgiveness, biblical hermeneutics, and political thought. In diverse and powerful ways, the contributors ground their scholarship with the activist drive to deepen, enrich, and strengthen intellectual work in meaningful ways.

Long believed to bear witness to the beginning of all life, the Bible's first book, Genesis, has been plumbed by a cornucopia of theologies and philosophies for ideas about social organization, human relationships, class, gender and gender roles, marriage, land rights, private property, and so much more. For many readers, assumptions about a divine creator, whose eye is cast upon a favored community, are at the heart of Western societies and politics and reside at the core of many national foundation myths. Yet despite all this, Genesis is not a frequent subject of postcolonial analyses seeking to expose the rootedness of inequalities within dominant social, political, and economic institutions. At times provacative, at others conciliatory, Jeremiah Cataldo explores how postcolonialism's rudeness, anger, and subversiveness are challenges to dominant traditions of interpreting Genesis and how those traditions influence who we are, how we relate to each other, how we read the Bible, and why, despite an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, we passionately cling to what divides us.

Earth and all its communities of life are experiencing a climate crisis, a phrase broadly understood here as the disruption of the Earth’s systems. This disruption, caused by social, political, economic, cultural, and ecological turmoil, upheaval, and violence, negatively affects the atmosphere in which life exists. In the midst of such disruption, how can we have hope? And, if we can, where can we find it and keep it alive? This edited collection brings together the work of thirteen theologians, philosophers, and scientists from disparate parts of our shared Earth to continue the efforts of Thomas Berry in arguing that hope can be found even in the midst of global crises. Though each essay offers a different vision of hope, they agree with Berry’s vision of shifting to an Earth-centered world from a human-centered one. Through this radical shift, we see ourselves as not alone but rather woven within a network of living communities equally affected by devastating changes. By collaborating with other-than-human communities on this planet, the scholars herein reconceptualize hope, thereby challenging traditional ways of thinking about and solutions for today’s multi-layered issues. When those on the margins of life are seen, heard, respected, cherished, and listened to, then hope flourishes and all life recovers its vibrancy.