JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES最新文献

{"title":"In Honor of John L. Esposito","authors":"Seth Ward","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931514","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> In Honor of John L. Esposito <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Seth Ward, <em>(retired)</em> </li> </ul> <p>Readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with John L. Esposito's life and career. In 1974, he earned his Ph.D. from Temple University's Department of Religion, where he got to know Professor Leonard Swidler. Since 2016, Esposito has served on the journal's board and has contributed to the Dialogue Institute as a lecturer for visiting international students and scholars through a State Department-funded program on religious pluralism. A past president of the American Academy of Religion, of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, he has also been a member of the World Economic Forum's Council of 100 Leaders and of the European Network of Experts on De-Radicalisation. He served as a Senior Scientist for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed by Kofi Annan as an ambassador for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, and has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and other agencies, European and Asian governments, corporations, universities, and media worldwide.</p> <p>Professor Esposito's scholarly publications are mostly in the field of Islamic studies, yet he is a Catholic, and his main academic positions have been at Jesuit institutions, first the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, then Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he is the founding director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the Bridge Initiative: Protecting Pluralism—Ending Islamophobia in the Walsch School of Public Service. His teaching subjects in Religious Studies were a classic example of fields considered to be within the orbit of Oriental Studies: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—yet he is closely associated with the trend of overcoming the real or perceived biases involved in teaching about these religious communities. His name is on dozens of books, some as sole author, such as <em>Islam: The Straight Path</em> and <em>What Everyone</em> <strong>[End Page 263]</strong> <em>Needs to Know about Islam;</em> others as editor-in-chief (including several encyclopedias from Oxford University Press); or as co-author of important works.</p> <p>Esposito has played a central role in the development of the academic study of Islam and in Ecumenical and Religious Studies for decades. In particular, as the final chapter in a book of essays published in his honor, begins, \"Professor John Esposito has dedicated his academic career to defending the place of Muslims and Islam in the modern world, and in the United States.\"<sup>1</sup> Of course, as shown in this work, Esposito's influence extends far beyond that.</p> <p><em>Overcoming Orientalism</em>, edited by Tamara Sonn, honors Esposito by drawing out four conclusio","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"78 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141585997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ecumenical and Interreligious Identities in Nigeria: Transformation through Dialogue by Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke (review)","authors":"Effiong Joseph Udo","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931517","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Ecumenical and Interreligious Identities in Nigeria: Transformation through Dialogue</em> by Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Effiong Joseph Udo </li> </ul> Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke, <em>Ecumenical and Interreligious Identities in Nigeria: Transformation through Dialogue</em>. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022. Pp. 422. $132.00. <p>Religious diversity anywhere in the world has implications for both social cohesion and conflicts. In the Nigerian socioreligious context, this phenomenon often generates more conflicts than peace and attracts regular scholarly debates and reflections by ordinary citizens. The severity of the issues involved is probably due to the uniqueness of the Nigerian religious scene. Nigeria is the only country where roughly one-half of its population is made up of Muslims and the other half of Christians. Thus, with Islam and Christianity being the dominant religions, an interplay of several factors, including political, economic, and <strong>[End Page 275]</strong> cultural forces, complicates social harmony and human security. A fitting response in recent times, however, is the attention given to the importance and practice of ecumenism and dialogue to help address the issues, which makes this well-researched book a timely and relevant resource for the ongoing search for solutions to intra- and interreligious conflicts and violence in Nigeria.</p> <p>Okpaleke has undertaken a wide-ranging investigation into the \"relationship: between identity and difference, between dialogue and transformation, between ecumenical and interreligious engagements, and between theology and praxis.\" He posits that dialogue brings about transformation, demonstrated in the case study of Anglican-Roman Catholic ecumenical dialogue and relations that has resulted in remarkable changes for both ecclesial communities. With this successful test case, Okpaleke concludes that transformation applies to individuals and groups, through both dialogue in general and ecumenical and interreligious dialogue in particular.</p> <p>The author grapples extensively with the challenging issues of theological exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. He draws the theological model of \"inclusive pluralism\" by which Jacques Dupuis constructed Trinitarian Christology to elucidate his identity-in-difference, not an identity-against-difference formula for Christian self-understanding in the interreligious encounter (see his <em>Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue</em> [2001]). Particularly fascinating is his connection to and advocacy for the trinitarian paradigm for interreligious dialogue in Nigeria, which he also draws heavily from Michael Ipgrave's <em>Trinity and Interfaith Dialogue: Plenitude and Plurality</em> (2003).</p> <p>Perhaps the major strength of this book is th","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141585998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in Religion and Theology by José Francisco Morales Torres (review)","authors":"Jeffrey Dudiak","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931524","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in Religion and Theology</em> by José Francisco Morales Torres <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jeffrey Dudiak </li> </ul> José Francisco Morales Torres, <em>Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in Religion and Theology</em>. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield), 2023. Pp. 226. $100.00, cloth, $45.00, eBook. <p>This book is a sprawling set of studies, heavy in references to, and quotations from, an impressive range of material across several disciplines. We tour twentieth-century phenomenology and visit a representative medieval ontologist from each of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions to provide a new vista upon theological anthropology, with implications for our understanding of some of our central and perennial ethical values. Its unifying theme is \"wonder.\" While the author brings a broad and admirable erudition to this book, in style and substance he is more encyclopedic than incisive. I enjoyed learning from each of the parts but was less persuaded by the book's argument as a whole.</p> <p>The first chapter is a phenomenology of \"wonder,\" which emerges as \"an encounter between the 'excess-with' of the other, that acts first, and the available openness of the self\" (p. 41). While the analyses of the chapter are both interesting and credible, I would have been more convinced had there been more focus on a sustained phenomenological analysis of wonder itself so that the reader could \"see\" what is being described, rather than being given a ready-made description of the phenomenon.</p> <p>In Chapter 2, Torres attempts \"a metaphysical inquiry [that] allows one to go where phenomenology cannot and propose what [ontological structure] may lie behind the phenomenon of wonder\" (p. 50). Here, the anti-metaphysical concerns that motivated so much of the phenomenological movement are ignored, and the phenomenology that the book advocates is unproblematically shown to not only open up upon, but also to require, a metaphysical grounding. The author attempts to cover this objection in his conclusion by claiming that he accepts \"phenomenology as a method, but not as an ideology that discourages or rejects the metaphysical enterprise\" (p. 181). He shows how the metaphysics that \"'stands under' the ontological dialectic between identity and difference that is present in the event of wonder\" (p. 181) is developed across the doctrine of \"participation\" as it emerges across a reading of three medieval metaphysicians: Ibn Gabirol (Jewish), Ibn Arabi (Islamic), and Thomas Aquinas (Christian). All three ground this participation in \"generosity,\" which Torres presents as a metaphysical condition of possibility for, and a key moment in, ","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141586004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking Intellectual Ecumenism in Interfaith Debates on God's Existence: From Avicenna's Salvation and Maimonides's Guide to Aquinas's De Ente","authors":"Matthew K. Reising","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931513","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>precis:</p><p>Scholars have long contended that Aquinas managed to escape the devastating critique launched by Averroes against the being/essence distinction by reimagining being/essence according to an analogy of act/potency rather than Avicenna's model of accident/substance. This essay complicates the scholarly consensus that Aquinas defined his metaphysical thought on being and essence against the philosophy of Averroes and instead argues that Aquinas's <i>De Ente et Essentia</i> can be seen as modeling interfaith dialogue, intellectual ecumenicism, and hybridity. Aquinas developed his thought through interlocution and philosophical interchange rather than opposition, a process that emphasized openness rather than alterity. After showing through the source material that Aquinas would not even have had access to Averroes's critique, I offer a reexamination of the historical development of Aquinas's reimagining of being/essence as act/potency and argue that Aquinas developed his thought not in opposition to Averroes's <i>Long Commentary of the Metaphysics</i> but, rather, in dialogue with Maimonides.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141585995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"My Journey as a Religious Pluralist: A Christian Theology of Religions Reclaimed by Alan Race (review)","authors":"Eugene Fisher","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931515","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;My Journey as a Religious Pluralist: A Christian Theology of Religions Reclaimed&lt;/em&gt; by Alan Race &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Eugene Fisher &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Alan Race, &lt;em&gt;My Journey as a Religious Pluralist: A Christian Theology of Religions Reclaimed&lt;/em&gt;. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, Wipf and Stock, 2021 Pp. 232. $26.00, paper. &lt;p&gt;Scholars already involved in ecumenical and interreligious studies and dialogues will find some interesting perspectives in this book. It does, however, have some flaws and errors, which I shall note below. The book is a collection of previous articles published by the author over the years so does not always take into account more recent studies of scholars involved in the work that Race presents.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The book is divided into four parts: Critical Foundations, Constructive Theory, Ethics in Dialogue, and an Epilogue asking the critical question, \"Whose God is it anyway?\" Race goes into the history of the development of Christian theological understanding of the validity of other religious traditions and its still-developing understanding of humanity's cultural, religious, and spiritual diversity, affirming that this diversity is a significant and good reality from which, through studying other religions and engaging in dialogue with people of other faiths, we can learn more about God's relations with all peoples and come to a deeper understanding of our own.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Race describes how the early Christians brought together Jewish monotheism and Greek philosophy and how, much later, it took into account the Enlightenment and integrated its knowledge and wisdom into the evolving Christian self-definition, which also opened it up to awareness of the other world religions and traditions. Christianity moved, albeit slowly, away from seeing itself as the only \"true\" religion to being, of necessity, in dialogue with its many \"others\" and, so, able to learn from them and, in the process, become more unified not only with \"them\" but also with the ultimate \"Other,\" God, who lives in the hearts and souls of all humans. He moves beyond exclusivism and inclusivism into pluralism, as being the will of the One God of us all. &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 271]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the second part, he emphasizes this new openness to learning and engaging with the \"others\" through dialogue, and in the third part, to how various religious/communal peoples can work together ethically for the benefit of all, devoting a relatively short section to 9/11 and its implications for the absolute necessity of working together rather than against each other. He follows this with a clear denunciation of religious absolutism and interreligious violence, urging us all to meet amicably in the Public Square that we all share.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Race then outlines how Christians can come together with other religious grou","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141588267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Idolatry: A Contemporary Jewish Conversation ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein (review)","authors":"Zev Garber","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931519","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Idolatry: A Contemporary Jewish Conversation&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Zev Garber &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Idolatry: A Contemporary Jewish Conversation&lt;/em&gt;. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. Jewish Thought, Jewish History. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2023. Pp. 375. $119.00, cloth; $25.00, paper. &lt;p&gt;The premise of this impactful collection on idolatry is the centrality of God within biblical and rabbinic Judaism. God-talk in the Torah and among the Sages lives by revelation and interpretation (&lt;em&gt;midrash&lt;/em&gt;); the Lord alone is God, uniquely one, eternal not corporeal, who can be praised and questioned if warranted. Judaism prohibits any form of idolatry even if it is used to worship the one God of Judaism, as occurred during the sin of the golden calf (Exodus 32). The opening obligations toward God are proclaimed in the &lt;em&gt;`aseret ha-dibrot&lt;/em&gt;/Ten Commandments/Decalogue (Ex. 20:2–7; Dt. 5:6–11). The God of Israel is the universal Sovereign of the world, who has redeemed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery; the unity and spirituality of God prohibits depiction by any graven image or any manner of likeness of heaven above, earth below, or the sea underneath. The worship of &lt;em&gt;'elohim 'acherim&lt;/em&gt; (\"other gods/foreign gods,\" the biblical term for idolatry), depicted on the book's cover, in any form or through icons is absolutely prohibited; \"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain\" (Ex. 20:7; Dt. 5:11) is a commandment against perjury, profane swearing, and false contracts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Biblical idolatry is the worship of gods (or celestial bodies or natural phenomena) in place of the one God who created the world, redeemed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and revealed the Torah on Mount Sinai. Idol-worshiping &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 279]&lt;/strong&gt; nations and their sacred altars and pillars are absolutely denied presence in the Land of Israel. No treaties are to be signed with them, nor can marriages of daughters and sons occur with them (Deuteronomy 7). Additionally, rabbinic Judaism defines idolatrous practice as one of three cardinal sins for which one is supposed to die rather than transgress (along with murder and illicit sex). A ban on blasphemy, murder, incest, and idolatry are some of the Noahide commandments, the seven laws that Judaism teaches are incumbent on all of humanity (Gen. 9:1–17). In sum, embracing &lt;em&gt;`avodah zarah&lt;/em&gt; (foreign/strange service/work, idolatry) amounts to the denial of the whole Torah (Maimonides).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The practice of idolatry is an obligatory test applied by Judaism to all religions to judge whether they are compliant with the belief and practice of strict monotheism. Limited contact, prohibition, and restriction are applied if they are seen as practitioners of &lt;em&gt;`avodah zarah&lt;/em&gt;; no close social con","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141586000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Church in the Pluriverse: Open Orthodoxy for Worldwide Communion","authors":"Michael T. Smith","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931510","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>precis:</p><p>This essay explores the post- and decolonial concept of the pluriverse as it relates to the perennial tension between unity and diversity in the Christian faith. At root, the pluriverse is a vision of \"a world in which many worlds fit\" that entails respect and dignity across radical and incommensurable difference. Yet, the pluriverse also has space for common commitments and projects shared between radically different worlds. When applied to the Christian faith, the church itself can be understood as a pluriverse, and orthodoxy is reconfigured as a plural enterprise that takes shape differently in different settings, thereby assuming and celebrating particularity and difference even as a commitment to right belief is maintained across Christian contexts. Moreover, common ground in Christ and a common commitment to faithfulness opens space for interaction and mutual edification across difference. I deem this situated and connected practice \"open orthodoxy.\" The structure of this proposal will unfold in two movements. First, I will present insights from the pluriversal discussion, which includes voices from postcolonial and decolonial thought, anthropology, sociology, ethics, and political theory. This section will be ordered around four aspects of pluriversal difference: radical difference, related difference, dignified difference, and aligned difference. Second, I will situate the church in a pluriversal setting to glean lessons from what has come before, beginning with a biblical argument for the church as a pluriverse and exploring the theological themes of confession, commonality, and orthodoxy as they relate to the pluriversal aspects of difference listed above. Ultimately, open orthodoxy will be presented as a viable practice for the church in a world that continues to recognize and reckon with its plurality.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141586149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel ed. by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro (review)","authors":"Zev Garber","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931516","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Zev Garber &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel&lt;/em&gt;. Edited by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. 309. $34.95. &lt;p&gt;This well-balanced, highly informative work provides a roadmap to understand the biblical dictum that Israel is the Chosen People, possessing the Holy Land, and whose divine calling, &lt;em&gt;le'or goyim/&lt;/em&gt;\"a light unto the nations\" (Is. 49:6) is advanced by a democratically elected quasi-religio State of Israel. The book proposes a setting marked by Jewish and Catholic theologies of the Land and State of Israel, interwoven with interest in Jewish and Palestinian (Arab, Bedouin, Christian, Muslim) residence on the Land. By focusing on a variety of Catholic approaches and methods to Jewish thinking on God, Torah, Land, and People, the chapters discuss a number of topics (nationalism/Zionism, religion, secularism) that provide an accessible approach to understand the dynamics of a collective Jewish/Israeli view of modernity, which differs considerably from a religious/halakhic worldview. The veracity of a biblical narrative is tested by Catholic insight and teaching that often conflicts with the Torah seen by the Jews as religiohistory.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Following a preface by H. B. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the editors' introduction, the essays are in three parts. Part I is \"Listening Again to Scriptures.\" Lawrence Feingold offers a theological, typological, and eschatological reading of scriptures sans supersessionism for the return of the Jewish people to the Land and the possibility of a renewed encounter with Jesus mandated by the State of Israel. Etienne Vetö asserts that God's presence in the return of the Jews to the Land includes the call to share the Land with the residential inhabitants, the Palestinian people. Ambiguities are noted, and many challenges remain. Catholic questions regarding Israel's relationship to the Promised Land after Christ are presented by Jean-Miguel Garrigues and Eliana Kurylo. In lieu of the scarcity of Promised Land fulfillment in the Second Testament, the essayists probe millenarian eschatology of Christian theologians from before Augustine of Hippo to post-Vatican II advances in Jewish-Catholic &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 273]&lt;/strong&gt; relations, suggesting that the revival/resurrection of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel alludes to the fulfillment of the mystery of redemption carried by the Church. Isaac Vikram Chenchiah surveys passages in the &lt;em&gt;Tanakh&lt;/em&gt; and Second Testament that connect people to a land and posits a Christian belief that Christ shines ligh","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141588315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination by Roberta Sterman Sabbath (review)","authors":"Zev Garber","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931523","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination&lt;/em&gt; by Roberta Sterman Sabbath &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Zev Garber &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Roberta Sterman Sabbath, &lt;em&gt;Sacred Body: Readings in Jewish Literary Illumination&lt;/em&gt;. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023. Pp. 216. $95.00, cloth; $45.00, e-book. &lt;p&gt;In her laudable study of \"sacred body\" in select readings of Jewish religious and secular texts and assessment of cultural practices, Sabbath proposes separating the divine-oriented religious belief and interpretation of practitioners from the popular religion representing the great mass of the people. Abounding with contextual readings and resources, this religiosociological treatment of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, philosophy, enlightenment, contemporary literature, and dance investigates the constituent characteristics of living Judaism, yielding a complex interdependence of orthodoxy and heterodoxies viewed separately and synoptically. Her chapters reflect expressions of Jewishness that speak from biblical-rabbinical-mystical-enlightenment periods to contemporary divine-human issues of concern, such as the treatment of sin, God's justice, personal lament, the making of vows, the view of self and outsider within the prophetic visionary tradition, material culture, etc. Sabbath's methodological approach focuses on the secular personalization of Israelite-Judahite religious belief, theosophy, and practice. Overall, the volume critically surveys the scholarship and raises important exegetical and sociological questions relevant to her objective to understand further the religious life of Israelite-Judahite society from the perspective of secular individual experience and expression.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sabbath reads her \"everyday sacred\" literary illumination as text and emphasizes word study, elements of style, conceptual clarification, and heightened emphasis. Accompanying the literary selections are concise, detailed explanations that help clarify Jewish ideas and arguments within the broader historical and ideological context of Jewish sacred and secular history. The Introduction &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 287]&lt;/strong&gt; charts the book's divisions and sections and explains the rationale for selection and interpretation. Her methodology immerses traditional Jewish exegesis and eisegesis in categories of enlightened modernity. She is less interested in an inclusive discussion of items and issues (such as abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism) than in illustrating genres and their features. Chapter One discusses narratives related to Eve, Abraham, and Sarah to illustrate Jewish literary illumination depicting everyday sacred obligations. The second chapter highlights Second Temple rabbinic texts that discuss compassionately and supportively sensitive life-affirming and life-negating b","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141586003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crisis of Faith: Today's African Christians and Mami-Wata (Mother-Water) Spirituality","authors":"Gesila Nneka Uzukwu","doi":"10.1353/ecu.2024.a931509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2024.a931509","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>precis:</p><p>This study provides an analysis of the impact of Mami-Wata spirituality on an understanding of the place and fate of Christianity in Africa today. A section of the Christian population negotiates their Christian beliefs through the prism of their traditional African religious cosmology and worldviews. This new Christian African spirituality is generating waves of faith crises. While previous scholarship has investigated the crises of African Christian faith from the dominant point of view of African culture and context, from Christian-Muslim interaction, or from the influence of Western elements, there are no works that show the multidimensional impacts of Mami-Wata spirituality on Christians and their faith, identity, and theological discourses. Departing from past works, the present work investigates how rudimentary constructs of African spirituality have engaged Christianity on several fronts, from the problem of faith crisis and the engagement of the Mami-Wata deity to how some African Christians wrestle with their devotion to the Virgin Mary <i>vis-à-vis</i> the traditional Mami-Wata deity. This analysis also demonstrates the indispensability of the female divine in spiritual and religious discourses, and it provides a pathway to construct a theology that is both truly Christian and grounded in African realities.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43047,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ECUMENICAL STUDIES","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141586148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}