To the many people in hopeless situations today, especially in Central America, Tamez brings a message of hope and affirmation through the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Embedded in the New Testament is a five-chapter uprising known as the Epistle of James. This provocative, and often overlooked letter is the founding document of liberation theology--the theology that seeks to preserve Jesus' "preferential option for the poor." Now with a detailed study guide, this book can be used by Christians everywhere to study the radical message of James and reflect on what it means to be a true Christian.

"This study explores the meaning of justification in the framework of Latin American theology of liberation, which is a particular way of doing theology welcomed by both Catholics and Protestants. In this theology, the poor, 'oppressed and believing, ' constitute the privileged locus of theology. That is to say, theology is done from their reality of oppression-liberation and their experience of God. Every great theological theme, every biblical reading, must be reexamined from that angle of vision." (from the Introduction, by Elsa Tamez)

Introduction : The body and religion : Regina Ammicht-Quinn and Elsa Tamez -- The perfect body : biomedical utopias : Hille Haker -- The superfluous body : utopias of information and communication technology : Klaus Wiegerling -- The cultural coding of the male and female body : Christina Von Braun -- Re-evaluating the body in eco-feminism : Rosemary Radford Reuther -- The world as God's body : Sally McFague -- Dichotomy or union of soul and body? The origins of the ambivalence of Christianity to the body : Jean-Guy Nadeau -- Corporeality and mysticism : Tina Beattie -- The immobile dance : the body and the Bible in Latin America : Nancy Cardoso Pereira -- Cosmos - church - body : observations on the notion of 'healing pastoral work : Rainer Bucher -- The western understanding of the body as a global perspective : Farideh Akashe-Bo?hme -- Bodies and gender in Mesoamerican religions : Silvia Marcos -- Embodiment and connexity : an African purview : Gosbert T.M. Byamungu -- Suffering, resisting, healing : an Asian view of the body : Sharon A. Bong -- Mixed-race body, cosmic race : Carmin?a Navia Velasco