Religious booknotes:
Gerhart, Mary
Religious booknotes Pluralism, peace, & social justice Mary Gerhart "TO DEAL adequately with the diversity of other faiths," Christians need to "face their own inner diversity." This was how...
...derstandings of "humanity...
...Some recent titles link the question of pluralism to the issues of social justice and peace...
...Two books describe how religious diversity is inextricably entangled in social-political situations...
...Blackbourne shows that Catholic principles informed some but by no means all the positions adopted by the Centre and that it sometimes opposed both the Catholic hierarchy and the government...
...In the long run, such understanding is the only sound basis for peace...
...The foundational aspects of pluralism are addressed in the Concilium issue, Is Being Human a Criterion of Being Christian?, edited by Jean-Pierre Jossua and Claude Geffre...
...His Religion and Social Conflicts is a self-critical, social-scientific-philosophical response to that question as it pertains to Latin American societies...
...He concludes by affirming the "potential revolutionary function of Education for Peace and Justice, ed...
...the hands of the army in 1914, the party mirrored the Reich's own instability...
...What is religion good for within class struggles...
...Twelve countries (or regions) are each represented in three articles of differing perspective (including that of a political prisoner...
...In the face of the Paisley opposition, however, neither Catholic nor Protestant ecumenical leaders could be sure of support from within their own constituencies . The most volatile episodes - the activities of the Orange Order, the publication of the Catholic Directory on Mixed Marriages, the secession of Presbyterians from the World Council of Churches - are analyzed for their larger effects in Irish history...
...Recent developments, he minks, have served to multiply "the brutal inequalities already present in Asian societies...
...From the time of the founding of the Centre Party as a "defensive reaction on the part of German Catholics faced with a minority position in the newly-unified Reich" to its "zig-zag" course into Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wurttemberg before 1914, by David Blackbourne, Yale University Press, 1980, $25.00, cloth, 267 pp., index...
...Maduro, professor of philosophy at the University of the Andes in Venezuela, has taught at the University of Notre Dame, and is the author of two books on the foundations of social thought...
...Moore attributes the "marked change in direction" from his three previous books, a change he regards as "the most fruitful theological change of direction" he has ever made, to Sobririo's work...
...what the editor, John C. England, refers to as "rice roots" theology vividly reminds us that religious tolerance remains largely unachieved...
...What can we expect from a recognition of our "own inner diversity...
...MARY GERHART...
...All major denominations are represented...
...Although it is puzzling that the editors ignore feminist concerns on this issue - the contributors, all male, are untouched, for example, by efforts to reform gender-biased language - several of the articles raise important questions...
...This book reflects the range which the genre' 'religious education theory" is beginning to have in this country and recognizes the foundational, educational, and ministerial questions in the issue of social justice, Although the collection is uneven, some essays such as that of Russell Butkus on John Dew-ey's and Paulo Freire's models of education for peace and social justice, Margaret Harris on models and education for priesthood, Gabriel Moran on the meaning of social reform, are provocative...
...By 1968 reactionaries led by Ian Paisley had been aroused by the much-publicized ecumenism developing among and within Protestant and Catholic communities...
...Pluralism) from a 1979 consultation held at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond...
...A book which belongs also and obviously to the genre of spiritual praxis but which makes brilliantly clear the reason for Christians to "be aware of their own diversity" is Sebastian Moore's The Inner Loneliness...
...The Inner Loneliness is informed by the thought of such diverse figures as Nietzsche, The Inner Loneliness, by Sebastian Moore, Crossroad, 1982, $9.95, paper, 120 pp...
...Yet his applications sometimes founder, for example, in his un-elaborated distinction between the involvement of clergy and religious in "partisan politics" or in "clear protest against concrete injustice...
...The authors, Methodist churchmen who participated in the struggle to curb violence in Northern Ireland, believe that a "business as usual" attitude (if that attitude were even possible to maintain) is not sufficient...
...He calls for new, non-privatized, pastoral-theological models to reflect the growing but not enA Contemporary Social Spirituality, by Francis X. Meehan, Orbis, 1982, $6.95, paper, 133 pp...
...events which have shaped the theological tradition of each country provides a helpful introduction to each chapter...
...MARY GERHARTly sound basis for peace...
...Joseph Com-blin's "Humanity and the Liberation of the Oppressed" questions the uncritical association between "humanism" and middle-class unIs Being Human a Criterion of Being Christian ? edited by Jean-Pierre Jossua and Claude Geffre, Seabury Press, 1982, $6.95, paper, 83 pp...
...Another book which studies the politicization of religion, here seen in the Centre Party in Germany before 1914, is Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany by David Blackbourne...
...will be the effect of "the absence of fellowship among Christians, let alone [the presence of] suspicion and division" on the substance of faith itself...
...A book of quite different tenor and much larger scope, Living Theology in Asia covers twelve Asian countries which have national Christian traditions...
...One of the most valuable articles ("Human Rights and Christian Rights" by Nor-bert Greinacher) distinguishes between human and Christian rights by reviewing the implications of two documents in which each kind of right is made explicit: the United Nations' "General Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948" and the "Founding Declaration of the Committee for the Defense of Christian Rights in the Church of 19 December 1979...
...An editor's summary of historical Religion and Social Conflicts, by Otto Maduro, Orbis, 1982, $8.95, paper, 161 pp...
...People may cry routinely for social justice today, but the concept and the term originated only in the late nineteenth century - this we learn in Education for Peace and Justice, edited by Padraic O'Hare...
...They ask what MARY gerhart teaches hermeneutics, religion, and literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York...
...by John C. England, Orbis, 1982, $9.95, paper, 242 pp...
...Notwithstanding some lapses, such as in the use of the term, "Catholic backwardness," the book illuminates the complexity and die ambiguity of religiously informed political organizations...
...Jean Ladriere's "On the Notion of Criterion," asks how one constructs a concept of the human, starting from either an empirical or reflective basis...
...Nor was the party unir formly successful in reconciling the opposed interests of its constituents, many of whom voted with it only occasionally...
...The image of the church as a great ship making a slow turn in deep waters conveys Meehan's sense that some course-correction is occurring in the alignment of spirituality with social concerns...
...The author understands himself to have " 'done a Feuerbach,' not with sublime ideas like justice, mercy, love, understanding, but with the core-idea of self-love and the desire it generates 'to be for.' " With Moore's appropriation of Latin American theological reflection, we come full circle...
...church systems...
...Arrived at honestly and carefully, the recognition can bring about an increase in understanding that is at once critical and inclusive...
...The focus of the book is on the basic (and wishful) desire that God exist...
...His analysis is applied to religious interest, religious production, and the structuring of religious power...
...by Padraic O'Hare, Harper & Row, 1983, $9.95, paper, 234 pp...
...Feuerbach, Aquinas, and contemporary transpersonal psychologists...
...The keynote of Madura's book is the recognition of complexity - in the multiple etymologies of religion, in the relations between sociologies of religion and sociology in general, in and among the different Latin American countries...
...asks Otto Maduro...
...Just as important is the influence of the Latin American liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino...
...Startlingly fresh treatments of traditional images and concepts, such as those of "God's suffering in the human struggle" and the "first fruits" of the new humanity make this book important for a current view of Asian Christianity...
...tirely new sense that authentic spirituality includes the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and the structural...
...In her introduction to this English translation, Marie Augusta Neal calls the book a "splendid assignment...
...for those who wonder how a Marxist analysis can be consistently and informatively applied to the Latin American situation and still not treat the reality of Christianity as purely epiphenomenal...
...Nevertheless, the effect of living Theology in Asia, ed...
...The publishers present Moore as "a modern master who has been nurtured on the contemplative wisdom of the patristic and scholastic wisdom...
...This was how Gerald Anderson and Thomas Stransky summarized contemporary ecumenical prospects in their introduction to a collection of papers (Christ's Lordship and Religious Christians in Ulster, 1968-1980, by Eric Gallagher and Stanley Worrall, Oxford University Press, 1982, $19.95, cloth, 241 pp., index...
...Christians in Ulster, 1968-1980 chronicles the peace efforts of Irish religious leaders of all denominations and attempts to account for the success and failure of each effort...
...Cognizant of the need to reconstruct what was traditionally known as the "interior life," Francis X, Meehan links social justice to spirituality in A Contemporary Social Spirituality...
Vol. 110 • August 1983 • No. 14
