Many women of faith are interested in having deep conversations with their friends and families about issues they face in their personal lives. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of feminist and theologically progressive materials for these women to turn to for counsel or advice. Simultaneously, there are a growing number of theologically trained biblical scholars, theologians, and ministers who are experiencing similar life challenges, but who are generally discouraged from writing about these experiences in ways that would be accessible to the general public. This book bridges the chasm between Christian laywomen and feminist theologians. For the last fifty years, feminist theologians have sought to reimagine Christian theology in ways that speak to the realities and complexities of women's lives. They have also sought to use women's experience as the starting point for theological reflection in the same way that men's lives have shaped the history of Christian theology for the past 2000 years. In this book, feminist Christian scholars of theology and religion use the tools of their trade to examine powerful personal life experiences and to search for new and empowering ways of understanding the power of the sacred as they have experienced it.

In a time of climate change, environmental degradation, and social injustice, the question of the value and purpose of human life has become urgent. What are the grounds for hope in a wounded world? This Sacred Life gives a deep philosophical and religious articulation of humanity's identity and vocation by rooting people in a symbiotic, meshwork world that is saturated with sacred gifts. The benefits of artificial intelligence and genetic enhancement notwithstanding, Norman Wirzba shows how an account of humans as interdependent and vulnerable creatures orients people to be a creative, healing presence in a world punctuated by wounds. He argues that the commodification of places and creatures needs to be resisted so that all life can be cherished and celebrated. Humanity's fundamental vocation is to bear witness to God's love for creaturely life, and to commit to the construction of a hospitable and beautiful world.

This multidisciplinary volume unites research on diverse aspects of Jewish-Muslim relations, exchanges and coexistence across time including the Abrahamic tradition enigma, Jews in the Qur'an and Hadith, Ibn al-'Arabi and the Kabala, comparative feminist theology, Jews, Christians, Muslims and the Gospel of Barnabas, harmonizing religion and philosophy in Andalusia, Jews and Muslims in medieval Christian Spain, Israeli Jews and Muslim and Christian Arabs, Jewish-Muslim coexistence on Cyprus, Muslim-Jewish dialogues in Berlin and Barcelona, Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogues and teleology, Jewish and Muslim dietary laws, and Jewish and Muslim integration in Switzerland and Germany.

This book advances an Islamic political philosophy based on the concept of Ihsan, which means to do beautiful things. The author moves beyond the dominant model of Islamic governance advanced by modern day Islamists. The political philosophy of Ihsan privileges process over structure, deeds over identity, love over law and mercy and forgiveness over retribution. The work invites Muslims to move away from thinking about the form of Islamic government and to strive to create a self-critical society that defends national virtue and generates institutions and practices that provide good governance.

In the face of globalized ecological and economic crises, how do religion, the postsecular, and political theology reconfigure political theory and practice? As the planet warms and the chasm widens between the 1 percent and the global 99, what thinking may yet energize new alliances between religious and irreligious constituencies? This book brings together political theorists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religion to open discursive and material spaces in which to shape a vibrant planetary commons. Attentive to the universalizing tendencies of "the common," the contributors seek to reappropriate the term in response to the corporate logic that asserts itself as a universal solvent. In the resulting conversation, the common returns as an interlinked manifold, under the ethos of its multitudes and the ecology of its multiplicity. Beginning from what William Connolly calls the palpable "fragility of things," Common Goods assembles a transdisciplinary political theology of the Earth. With a nuance missing from both atheist and orthodox religious approaches, the contributors engage in a multivocal conversation about sovereignty, capital, ecology, and civil society. The result is an unprecedented thematic assemblage of cosmopolitics and religious diversity; of utopian space and the time of insurrection; of Christian socialism, radical democracy, and disability theory; of quantum entanglement and planetarity; of theology fleshly and political.

Thinking in Translation posits the Hebrew Bible as the fulcrum of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), underpinning a unique synthesis between systematic thinking and biblical interpretation. Addressing a lacuna in Rosenzweig scholarship, the book offers a critical evaluation of his engagement with the Bible through a comparative study of The Star of Redemption and his Bible translation with Martin Buber. The book opens with Rosenzweig's rejection of German Idealism and fascination with the sources of Judaism. It then analyzes the unique hermeneutic approach he developed to philosophy and scripture as a symbiosis of critique and cross-fertilization, facilitated by translation. An analysis of the Star exposes Rosenzweig's employment of translation in grafting biblical verses unto the philosophical discussion. It is followed by a reading that demonstrates how his Bible translation reflects an attempt to re-valorize the Tanakh as a distinctively Jewish scripture, over and against Christian appropriations. Thinking in Translation recasts Rosenzweig's life's work as a project of melding Judaism and modernity in an attempt to secure their spiritual and intellectual survival.

This book explores the methodological foundation of Islamic thought premised on the cardinal principle of Tawhid, meaning the Oneness of God as the universal law. The consequential methodological worldview arising from the monotheistic unity of knowledge is explained as the theory of consilience, meaning unity of knowledge as the primal ontological reality leading to its epistemological and phenomenological essentials of reasoning and thereby configuring reality. Masudul Alam Choudhury presents a non-mathematical exposition of the theory and applications of Meta-Science of Tawhid, and brings out the essential monotheistic methodological worldview of science.

Found in Translation is at once a themed volume on the translation of ancient Jewish texts and a Festschrift for Leonard J. Greenspoon, the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor in Jewish Civilization and professor of classical and Near Eastern studies and of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Greenspoon has made significant contributions to the study of Jewish biblical translations, particularly the ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, known as the Septuagint. This volume comprises an internationally renowned group of scholars presenting a wide range of original essays on Bible translation, the influence of culture on biblical translation, Bible translations' reciprocal influence on culture, and the translation of various Jewish texts and collections, especially the Septuagint. The volume editors have painstakingly planned Found in Translation to have the broadest scope of any current work on Jewish biblical translation to reflect Greenspoon's broad impact on the field throughout an august career.

N’ilah, “the closing of the gates� is, in many ways, the most anticipated worship service in the entire Jewish calendar. Coming at the end of the 24-hour fast that characterizes Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), it symbolizes the days of old when the gates of the ancient Temple closed at last, and with them, the last chance for prayers of atonement and reconciliation with God and with others. Nowadays, the synagogue service that replaced the Temple cult marks the occasion with heightened fervor: the only time all year when the gates of the ark that houses the Torah scroll remain open throughout the service; telltale melodies accompany the occasion; a final blast of the shofar (the ram’s horn) symbolizes the end of the fast and the new beginning that follows; special prayers celebrate the human capacity to create a life that matters beyond our own mortality -- and the presence of God who “reaches out a hand� to invite us into the new Jewish year that N’ilah’s final shofar blast inaugurates. All of this is the topic for volume eight in “Prayers of Awe,� the series devoted to exploring the depth of the Jewish High Holy Days. As with prior volumes, this one too comes with introductory essays on the history, theology, and deeper meaning behind the prayer experience. It then assembles some 40 short and accessible essays designed to unlock the mystery and depth of the occasion. Authors come from all walks of life – clergy and laypeople, scholars and artists, men and women across the generations – and from seven countries (Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Israel, the UK and USA). What music appreciation is to classical music, this series on prayer is to Jewish worship. This volume, in particular, explores Judaism’s timeless message of divine purpose and the ongoing search for meaning in a world of human frailty but also promise.

This volume explores the 'Mimetic Theory' of the cultural theorist Rene Girard and its applicability to Islamic thought and tradition. Authors critically examine Girard's assertion about the connection between group formation, religion, and 'scapegoating' violence. These insights, Girard maintained, have their source in biblical revelation. Are there parallels in other faith traditions, especially Islam? To this end, Muslim scholars and scholars of Mimetic Theory have examined the hypothesis of an 'Abrahamic Revolution.' This is the claim that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each share in a spiritual and ethical historical 'breakthrough:' a move away from scapegoating violence, and towards a sense of justice for the innocent victim.